I don’t agree. An all too great number of Saudis are paid for jobs they not only don’t show up to but preferably don’t show up to are they are paid to keep their eyes wide shut : that situation is not specific to Saudi Arabia or oil rich Arab countries. It is specific to all situations where the ressources are there for very qualified jobs through which intelligent employees could make whole peoples rich but are under the pay of employers who aim at the opposite. So many talented architects dream of building dream homes but the only jobs they find is signing mafia-built shoddy construction for cheap tourism that disfigure whole coastlines. That’s often the way of hiring people in other ressource rich countries such as Canada. Apart from that kind of situation, Saudis are wary of a future that might not be so oil rich after their reserves are exhausted or after fossil fuels are increasingly banned or rationed to protect global climate. They are covering whole swaths of desert with solar panels. And they go into gradual geoengineering so as to make certain valleys moister and moister. They are a pioneer country in that domain. They can already export more and more luxury food stuffs and not only dates.