“because the they are resource based economies (which
the USA could be if we shifted to natural gas for transportation)”

Excuse me! Reality check. Natural gas in incapable of handling America’s transportation needs. The cost in switching infrastructure would dwarf the Tarp bailout.
Considering that the USA posesses the world largest reserves of hydrocarbons, their is absolutely no need to spend trillions retooling automobiles for natural gas, digging up 121,446 filling stations (as of 2002) and rebuilding them at the cost of several million each.
No, the Natural Gas myth is a scam created by T. Boon Pickens in an attempt to turn his huge ownership position in Natural Gas into Trillions in profit. If one looks that the details, one finds that Pickens owns quite a bit of the corporations that will get richer converting Petrol in Natural Gas.
Meanwhil, under Utah and Wyoming there are around 80 Trillion barrels of OIL waiting to be extracted from OIL shale.
Not to mention shallow off shore wells and ANWR.
The only thing keeping the USA from extracting enough OIL to supply the rest of the world is the Environmentalist movement. A 100$US per head bounty would solve that problem and help the unemployed when their welfare benefits run out.
Resource based economies are NOT a good thing. Look it up.