Do other planets help us in any way?

I've read that some astronomers credit Jupiter for protecting Earth against many comets; it's gravitational pull would deflect or consume wayward comets that *might* have hit Earth. Some speculate that this protection is one reason life exists on Earth today.

We see how pock-marked the moon is; Earth has probably taken at least as much punishment, and likely more.

While we are some time away from being able to benefit from mineral resources and planetary mining, some of our planets do benefit us in other ways.

The large gas giants, Jupiter in particular, often protects the Earth from asteroids coming in from the Kuiper belt by drawing them in gravitationally. Without those gas giants out there, Earth would be much more susceptible to asteroid impacts and life on Earth may not have lasted as long as it has.

In fact, many astronomers believe Jupiter played such a large role in helping protect life on Earth that some believe an Earth-like exo-planet orbiting another star should ideally also have a Jupiter-sized planet in it's solar system to serve the same purpose

No. It's not financially feasable to extract resources from other planets at this point. Eventually, if we don't destroy ourselves, we'll probably mine other planets since they're definitely full of resources we can use.

All the planets in our solar system (and every object with mass in the universe) exert a gravitational pull on us and contribute to tides and such, but it's not too noticeable because of the distance.

No not really.

Some models show that Jupiter might divert some material away from us, but some other models show that Jupiter flings as much stuff towards us as it diverts away. We need more data on that.