> My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel
You're right about the latter part though. An Aramco failure is going to be a significant dent on MBS' domestic perception.
In many ways this is what is bankrupting the country, much more than the rampant corruption (which is still enormous, but pales into comparison with public spending).
The population of Saudi is absolutely exploding - nearly doubling every 20 years. It has a very young population with poor job opportunities, in a very energy intensive place to house people (AC demands and lack of fresh water).
This had led to completely unsustainable public spending. The revenue from oil is enormous but it's not growing in line with population and welfare spending. And the Saudi royal family know the people will turn quickly against them if the welfare tap is turned off.
They are in a really tricky position. While the royal family is outrageously wealthy, the country itself over the past decade is getting pretty broke. And with such population growth every year it becomes harder and harder to keep up.
I imagine this is why MBS is trying to push economic reform so much, almost at all costs, because he knows the game is up. But it is going to be very difficult to turn this quite literal oil tanker around.
They only added a 5% VAT in 2018 and just this year bumped it to 15% on a "temporary" basis.
Both fuel and electricity costs have increased and new payments exist for government services.
Saudi is trying to regear the economy and social safety nets away from oil dependency while they still have the income from oil dependency and that is the mission statement of Saudi Aramco today. Looking at actions of the company or the country any other way will cause distortions.
Sure, but even the average Saudi has a substantially higher QOL due to Aramco than their peers in most other nations. Nowhere else in the region has a comparable HDI.
Looking at the list of countries in the Middle East, it looks like Oman, Bahrain, Cyprus, Kuwait, UAE, Israel and Qatar have a similar or greater HDI than the KSA. (Though combined, they have about a similar population as KSA alone.)
Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait are whole different problems altogether. Bahrain is Sunni-ruled with Shia majority population, so once KSA weakens, expect to see some revolts soon. On the other hand, the UAE will step up its game and intervene in Bahrain should such a situation arise (ironically, Bahrain was going to join the UAE back in 1971, but backed away because they were richer and wanted to be the capital).
Kuwait and Oman are already falling to xenophobic pressure. They have begun expelling expats from jobs and looking for inward hiring, but this has had a net negative effect on their economies.
Perusing wiki, it looks like Saudi Arabia is a G20 economy with a population of 34 million people, yet only 3.1 million native Saudis are members of the labor force, the private sector labor force is 90% non-Saudi, and still only 12% of Saudis live below the local poverty line.
If I'm reading that right, 88% being above the threshold for poverty with only 9% workforce participation for native Saudis seems pretty noteworthy.
Difficulty their population has also grown 5X in 50 years. Which is not good considering they have little else going on economic other than oil.