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Saudi Arabia is ruled by Sharia law and is no. 12 in the world for median income per capita.
by willis936 5y ago
Saudi Arabia is ruled by Sharia law and is no. 12 in the world for median income per capita.
- kadoban 5y agoSaudi Arabia has special circumstances.
- galago 5y agoI just say outright that the "special circumstances" means that their wealth comes from a magic hole in the ground and not something their society was capable of creating or producing.
- postsantum 5y agoJust like Norway?
- l332mn 5y agoIn Saudia Arabia the people are basically on universal basic income. In Norway on the other hand, the oil profits are all invested into the pension fund, which is very sparingly used for any other purpose.
- galago 5y agoI would say yes, like Norway. If you have money coming out of nowhere the social stuff doesn't much matter as long as you can keep people from stealing your wealth.
- shakow 5y agoExcept that Norwegian oil money is only used for pensions and state investment. Your average Norwegian never sees the color of the petrodollars until their retirement, and they're still doing quite well.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoConsidering how much money goes into pension funds in european country, that makes it quite a lot.
- mumblemumble 5y agoAccording to The Source of All Truth, it's number 26: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if it ranks much higher for mean income.
- tialaramex 5y agoThat's from a self-reported telephone survey. ie You phone people (do the immigrant "workers" on a Saudi building site have phones? Are they allowed to answer a call while working?) and you ask "How much does your household make each year?" and they make up whatever they want but you write that down, and you hope that the ludicrous high numbers and ludicrous low numbers don't make a big difference to the resulting outcome, which is probably wrong, but unlike official statistics (which Saudi Arabia of course doesn't keep) you at least got a number.
- tialaramex 5y agoHow do you figure? Wikipedia puts it 54th slightly above Lithuania, slightly below the Czech Republic and not very different on non-default measures. [Edited to add: Aha! I was looking at per-capita GDP not a median, Saudi Arabia does not estimate a median. So, could be anything depending on who you ask] No Gini coefficent is available for Saudi Arabia, but do you feel like the millions of immigrant workers who can be executed on the say-so of their employers are sharing equally in that great wealth? Also, to the extent that Saudi Arabia does treat women very poorly, it also treats men very poorly, and children, and almost everybody, even the rich aren't in great shape in Saudi Arabia although they enjoy a wide range of benefits (e.g. like the US, Saudi Arabia executes criminals, but, unlike the US you can agree to pay the victim's family blood money instead, which of course is easy if you're a billionaire)
- simonh 5y agoDo you think Sharia Law had anything to do with having all that oil revenue? Since we’re on the subject of gender equality, I wonder what proportion of that income is controlled by women.