I(I'm from India) have some cousins working there to make a living. From everything I've heard, I get a feeling there is hardly any effort to build anything. No universties, and even those that exist run at the expense of people from other countries. There is crazy dole out of free cash, start from the king to the citizen.
The royal family from what I've heard literally wants everything government. The main king Ibn Saud had some I guess 10's of wives, from whom he fathered 100's of children, who now have reproduced to 1000's of grandchildren. Since not every one can be a king, you have to distribute government positions among the progeny of Ibn Saud, to keep people from dissenting and getting too ambitious to disrupt the line of succession. Apart from that from what I've heard, they also award prime contract, licenses and projects to their own family. So basically every thing stays and is designed to benefit only one family.
All this in a major tribal society, with heavy influence of the clerics. So they closely intermarry their own with the clerics and powerful tribes. Its basically a syndicate.
But they also realize that they can't do this forever. So they keep throwing some token pennies at their people. Basically building a welfare state.
There is no attempt to build self capabilities of any kind. They've tried and failed with a policy called 'Saudization'. To reduce the dependence on foreign nationals, they've tried everything. But people have so much dependence on free cash, they hardly feel the need to work. Lack of productivity(putting it mildly) among Saudi nationals or even a lack of desire to work, has been a source of jokes for decades.
Here is a hint to people in US. Look at a nation where there is "Universal Basic Income", or all those freebies and welfare benefit your guys ask for. Do you want your country, which is an example for remainder of the world for progress to turn into a nation like this?