Quote from: European Central Bank on April 19, 2017, 06:45:47 PM

Quote from: peter0425 on April 19, 2017, 06:43:49 PM

They have so much wealth that they don't know where to invest their money. Yeah, let see how it goes, if those rich prince or sheikh decided to invest in bitcoin then good for the bitcoin ecosystem. Otherwise, bitcoin is already doing fine as of the moment but if Middle East want's to join the fun, the better for us.

but i wonder what proportion of saudis have real money. you got the governing class of course who are crazy rich. i kind of get the impression everyone else is sitting around doing nothing being given oil money, but maybe not a great deal of it.

Correct

A recent article in Saudi Gazette, an English-language daily out of Riyadh

Quote

The details of the question, however, hold most of the answers. The vast majority of Saudi Arabia's GDP comes from oil, which is owned by the state. The state doles out a wide variety of subsidies to its citizens. The oil sector is responsible for 90% of GDP and 93% of employment. This takes relatively few people to operate. A result of this is very high unemployment, officially put at around 11% -- unofficially, around 30%, not including women.

There is very little manufacturing in the country, though considerably more assembly of foreign-made parts.

Highly skilled labor is available cheaply from other countries. This depresses employment opportunities as well as initiative. Entrepreneurship is certainly possible, but takes very large capital investment due to the high prices of doing business in the country, as well as the social costs of failure.

Over the past 50 years, young Saudis seem to have forgotten the importance of manual labor. As a result, they look down on it, preferring management-type jobs. This is changing, but as with all things in Saudi Arabia, change comes slowly. Similarly, service jobs are looked down upon. This is changing, however, with more Saudis willing to take certain types of service jobs -- hotel front desk, airline desks, restaurant staff, etc. Even when willing to take these jobs, though, society tends to frown upon them.