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Comment by idoh | Hacker News Reader

"Low oil prices have limited the government jobs that many Saudis have long relied on, and the kingdom is trying to push more citizens, including women, into gainful employment. But some working Saudi women say hiring private drivers to get them to and from work eats up much of their pay, diminishing the incentive to work."

I'm guessing that this is the biggest driver - Saudi Arabia just cannot afford to not allow this anymore.

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The dual income household had an unbelievable impact on Western and Asian economies, buoying incredible growth.

How the KSA handles the coming social liberalization will be interesting, Chinese women still grapple with social conservative attitudes regarding working women (ie: leftover women). It is inevitable that the people of the KSA will encounter similar difficulties.

Actually, the "leftover women" phrase refers to the relationship / marital status of some women, not their job status. Many of these women (including people I know personally) have reclaimed the term as a compliment -- there's a pun where they substitute a word that roughly means god-like or badass.

My mom and both of my grandmothers lived in a world where the dual income household is the norm, and has been the norm since the 50's, but since the 80's and 90's, there has been a retrograde shift because for a while, being a stay-at-home-mom became a status symbol. However, all of my cousins, male or female, are part of dual-income households. (They all live in Shanghai.) But that's a much longer rant and off-topic to the current discussion.

But +1 to your initial point, re: effect of dual income households on the economy.

Knowing more than a handful of 20s-30s ladies in SH through my Toastmasters club, although there is selection bias, they are some of the most capable, driven, hard working, talented young people I have ever met. And I am almost 50 so have seen a bit over the years. If they were unleashed by the system and cultural expectations, norms, and restrictions, there is nothing they could not accomplish.

>> buoying incredible growth

Then why not much deviation from historical trend lines:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/29/invisible-women/

" buoying incredible growth."

That only depends on how you measure value.

A parent leaves their kids with their grandparents during the day = $0 GDP.

A parent drops of them off at daycare = +$X GDP.

Just because people were not working in the economic system does not mean there was not real value creation.

My mother sometimes worked, sometimes did not. The difference in the quality of our lives was quite noticeably more negative when she worked. That 'negative value' is not measured in the GDP - only the 'positive value' of her income.

I'm not saying that she shouldn't have, and certainly not that there should not have been mass reforms - but it's important to remember that much of 'real consumer surplus' is simply not measured in the GDP.

Policies that focus on the GDP tend to overweight measurable economic activity - while other elements are externalized and suffer.

The environment, community, social cohesion - they all have value to us but because we don't put numbers behind them, they don't fit into the equations very well.

I also question the benefits of dual income families. For the economy, it might benefit certain people in society, typically the wealthy. At the household level, it can actually be detrimental (though obviously not always). Do we really need many cars, large homes, all this stuff filling our large homes?

denial of liberty is expensive.

And renewables/EVs are just getting started. It will be interesting to see what other freedoms Saudis will allow once EVs and renewables are a significant portion of the global market.

Perhaps freedoms will be taken by force by the Saudi citizens... when the petrol money runs out, the economic situation will worsen while the ability of the ruling elite to use money to keep the regime's stability will be greatly reduced. Looks like Prince Mohammed bin Salman understands this, and that is why he's trying to reduce his country's reliance on petrol money.

Ugg, unfortunately the problem is the opposite.

If you look at what the average person believes in that area, you will see that "allowing women to drive" is a very progressive opinion that makes the Saudi government/royalty a shining beacon of liberty, when you compare them to the opinions of the average person there.

In actuality, a populous democracy revolution would probably end the same way that the Iranian or MB Egyptian revolution ended.

I don't think "freedom" being seized by the Saudi citizens would have the result you seem to imagine it would.

If a country thinks it's okay to throw half of its brain power down the sinkhole, sure, why not, go ahead and do it. Just don't start crying afterwards that other countries are zooming past you on the highway to progress.

In my country the ability to build a family on a single average income closed decades ago.

It's a strange statement because low oil prices are caused by Saudi Arabia's own policies.

That is overly simplistic indeed.

Macro forces leave them a certain percentage wiggle room in production to affect price but US oil and the world wide reduction in demand rule even over OPEC at its strongest and OPEC is practically dead really.

While US producers price their projects in the $25-35 cost per boe produced and the Fed keeps rates low the US can keep on trucking and Saudi can do very little about it. There are billions of barrels of oil sitting offshore in ships waiting for better prices.

There are hundreds of fracked fields that can be turned on and off like a faucet.

Sure offshore deep water is slow due to cost and cannot respond to swings readily but the fundamentals changed years ago.

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