Ha ha and you thought you'd given a very sensible answer eh Howard? Well, I liked it anyway.
Alexander, Howard speaks huge sense and is vry well informed, so do not discard his views so lightly. I have been closely linked with a major water supply and desalination project in Saudi, and Nigeria for that matter (I trained the Programme and Project Managers). The investment level is beyond our wildest comprehension Alexander, as it is in the Gulf States, Kuwait, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and Jordan.
Virtually all the technical and adminstrative type work for every industry is being done by imported labour as very few Arab states actually have the manpower to do such work. The reason for this is the lack of a middle class, plus the rich won't do the work and the poor are too busy scratching a living from the land.
As Howard absolutely correctly points out, as these major industrial projects complete, and the local population grows into a middle class, the imported labour will be discarded. So, although the genuine local population will grow, as you rightly point out, it will be at least another generation before the local population even comes close to matching today's levels.
So, Alexander, please don't posture as the fount of all knowledge on subjects which you are not the expert.
