[wp381640]

$34B is a lot in company scales but not a lot when it is the vast majority of a government budget used to sustain a very plush lifestyle for millions of people.

Saudi has been running huge deficits and have had to dig into their reserves to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to sustain their spending.

In the first five months of '15 they had to draw $65B from reserves just to meet costs[0]

They've introduced a new VAT, excise on fuel, cut health and education spending etc. to prevent the house of cards from collapsing[1].

[0] https://financialtribune.com/articles/world-economy/20960/sa...

[1] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/01/13/...

[adventured]

Further to that point, Saudi Arabia's population is expanding very rapidly, putting immense strain on those limited resources (which have to be used to continually pacify the population).

From 10m people in 1980, to 33m today.

[rockinghigh]

That's only 3% growth per year.

[sytelus]

Population growth in India/China when govt didn’t do any restrictions was ~2.5%. These days it has reduced to around 1.5%. USA is at 0.7%.

In other words 3% is very likely among the highest rate human population can grow with real-world constraints.