Shrinking Saudi middle class = long-term problem

'Shrinking Saudi middle class causes concern' says Gulf News.

The headline's a bit misleading for what's more of a feature/think-piece, but it should worry all those marketers and business people who are banking on an increasingly-prosperous KSA.

One of my working assumptions in recent years has generally been that Saudi Arabia can be relied on to be a) growing, b) growing at a reasonable clip thanks to its low starting-point, and c) growing despite most of the global turmoil, thanks to the oil revenues and the fundamental needs of 27-million-odd Saudis - the only market in the Gulf that's really real.

But if this is a faulty assumption...

Hmm.