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To: muawiyah
I once met someone who is a university chemistry professor in Saudi Arabia. He's muslim, but not an arab, and western trained. His first comment on his students was "lazy."

When thinking about the Saudis we on the right tend to focus on their religious issues, but forget their economic ones. At least since OPEC skyrocketed crude oil prices 40 years ago, most Saudis are essentially welfare cases. A lot of the real work is done by foreigners, often poorly treated and relatively poorly paid people from poor muslim nations. Most Saudis live off of government handouts funded by oil revenues. They don't have to and often don't want to work. They've had a population boom and must have many second and third generation welfare cases. Some conservatives will lack much insight into Islam, but most will understand the effects of multigenerational welfare on people's behavior and thought processes. We just don't think to apply that insight to the "rich" Saudis, but we should! The price of crude has been relatively stable for some time, but their population keeps growing so their per capita take from the dole must be declining. We also should be able to understand how they'll react to that. Think of them as Detroit, before the money ran out, but with Imans instead of union bosses running everything, and they may make more sense to us.

193 posted on 04/24/2013 1:04:17 PM PDT by JohnBovenmyer (Obama been Liberal. Hope Change!)
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To: JohnBovenmyer
We just don't think to apply that insight to the "rich" Saudis, but we should!

You just reminded me of an old short article in a magazine, that reported on a sociology or psych study 30+ years ago that had found surprisingly parallel problems among scions of rich families that resembled the problems of children of very poor or welfare families. The problems revolved around lack of motivation, incentive, and drive.

202 posted on 04/24/2013 1:20:35 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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