Part Two: Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Tyrant of Saudi Arabia

episode

Behind the Bastards 50 min 3 speakers 4 chapters transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Robert Evans 0:05

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about Mohammed bin Salman for this week and next week with my former colleague and current friend, David Pell. David. Hello. Hi, where can the good and bad people on the internet find you?

David Pell 0:21

You know, before that I realized, I don't think I've said, thank you for having me on. I didn't say that.

Robert Evans 0:27

Oh, you don't need to thank me.

David Pell 0:28

I know. It's just the thing you say on podcasts and it occurred to me. I was like, I didn't even say that anyway. Thank you for having me on. You asked where you could find me. Google Gamefully Unemployed. G-A-M-E-F-U-L-L-Y. Unemployed. It's a movie podcast, mostly in TV. Or watch some more news hosted by Cody Johnston. News show, like a talking head. News show. I am the head writer over there. He is. I'm bossing people around.

Robert Evans 1:06

Yeah, you're the king over there. Just like Mohammed bin Salman kind of is in Saudi Arabia. And Dave, I would thank you for being the guest, but actually I'm going to thank you for watching my cat for half a year that one time.

David Pell 1:19

Oh, that was a delight.

Robert Evans 1:19

Which is much bigger of an ask than being on a podcast. Oh, yeah.

David Pell 1:24

That cat left a scar on me. I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere.

Robert Evans 1:28

That's good. She left some on me, too. She was a great cat.

David Pell 1:31

Well, she didn't have, yeah, she got a bite on her.

Robert Evans 1:35

Yeah, she got a bite on her.

David Pell 1:37

Yeah. She also got along with my cat way more than my current second cat gets along.

Robert Evans 1:42

Yeah. She and Kitten were best friends for, well, again, like half a year.

David Pell 1:46

Yeah.

Unknown 1:49

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

Robert Evans 1:57

So by the time Prince Mohammed bin Salman was born in 1985, the Saudi state had reached a level of what we might call catastrophic dependence on oil revenues. Aramco accounted for roughly 80% of state spending, which meant that any serious drop in oil prices rendered the state insolvent, living off its savings in order to continue spending. Nearly two-thirds of Saudi men were government employees, right? And that doesn't mean they're working. It just means they're government employees. Most of them aren't doing real jobs, you know? Most of the state jobs that they have are lifetime gigs that exist as a form of welfare. They're a way for the House of Saud to bribe enough of the free male population to ensure there's never too much unrest.

Robert Evans 2:39

Because then you'll lose your job.

David Pell 2:39

This is the thing, right? Like, I would be fine with a government that I guess you could call it bribing, but just paid us all to live. But that's what's happening here, right? It's just enough people so that they can screw other people.

Robert Evans 2:54

Yeah, and they have to bring other people into the country to really fuck over. Like, to have an underclass that they can fuck over enough, you know? Yeah. And this state of affairs leads to some complications because so many jobs are lifetime things. Giving raises to certain classes of jobs is financially untenable. If you give like everyone who has this job a raise, that's a meaningful percentage of the country. And you just can't afford to do that because you have to keep that raise going for everyone who holds that job forever. Instead, the government gets into a habit of adding benefits to jobs, which are salary bumps for employees who have specific skills. Like classes of workers will get an amount of money every year for knowing how to type or knowing how to use like Microsoft Office.

Robert Evans 3:38

And workers who have these skills get these bumps. And there are so many of these bumps that over time, many workers get paid more as a result of all of the bumps to their salary than the actual base value of their salary itself. Saudi government employee benefits constitute between 10 and 150% of worker income by the late 20th century. Wow. They get around this to try to avoid paying more money, and it winds up costing a huge amount of the national budget to do this.

David Pell 4:06

Right, that really got away from them.

Robert Evans 4:08

Yeah, they're robbing Peter to also pay Peter. Right.

4:12

Yeah.

Robert Evans 4:13

Now, the fact that most people working in Saudi Arabia were not Saudi represented another issue. The state, again, tries to fix the problem by fiddling around the edges.