Unable to live without our servants.

last updated 8 January 2015

Saudi Arabia

Rasheed Abou-Alsamh

The latest generation of Saudis is spoiled rotten, said Rasheed Abou-Alsamh in the Riyadh Arab News. Those who were born in the early 1980s, after the first oil boom ended, have grown up “with maids and drivers at their beck and call.” Their parents gave them everything: luxury cars, designer clothes, and the latest electronics. Their servants dressed them, fed them, and cleaned up after them. This generation never knew “the deprivations of the pre–oil boom days, when Saudi Arabia was a much poorer nation.” I’m not saying we should begrudge ourselves our wealth. But we don’t have to act so insufferably entitled. Most of my friends aren’t remotely embarrassed to admit that they are lost without “a foreign maid to boss around.” They can do no work for themselves. “Do we really want to be a nation of people who cannot make our own beds, know how to wash our own bathrooms and clothes, or cook our own food—just because we can afford to hire poor foreigners to do all of these things for us?” This kind of “warped mentality” is pure “laziness.”