Saudi Arabia’s shrinking Middle Class

“The problem in Saudi Arabia is that the middle class is shrinking,” said Turki Hamad, a Saudi political scientist. “And the more poverty you have, the more fundamentalism you have.”

…Saudi Arabia’s problems have been decades in the making. In the early 1980s, the nation’s per capita income was $28,000 in current dollars, on a par with that of the United States. Since then, the U.S. per capita income has grown to $34,100, while Saudi Arabia’s has slipped to $7,230.

LA Times