Expatriates and tourists are paying the Emirati lifestyle. The state provide the locals good salaries, because 75% of Dubai Emiratis are working for the government. In the other Emirates this number is even higher, reaching even more 90% of locals working for the government.
When the government has positions with good salaries they say “Only for Emiratis” and sometimes they are not even high skilled positions, just stamping papers. The low paying jobs go for immigrants.
Locals have free health care. You see Americans, they are freaking commies! They have free education, no taxes. They don’t even need to study hard. They will get their diplomas and a job as soon as they leave university.
So how the foreigners are the ones who are making them rich? Because foreigners are paying for everything. There is no public service in Dubai for the foreigners, no school, no hospitals, social protection, nothing. The companies have to provide Health Insurance, if you need school for you or your children, you will be paying a lot of money for them. Rents are expensive. Foreigners will never get citizenship, so no pensions for retirees in Dubai. Don’t have work anymore? Leave the country. Got retired? Leave the country.
UAE protects it’s citizens, their nationalities, their territories and their traditions. They are not giving in to external pressure to change their laws.
And you know what? They are right! You are an immigrant, you are leaving your country for a better money. You know the rules in advance. Don’t like? Move out. Chose another country.
I think Europe should take some lessons from them.
Dubai is costly and that money is paying the locals. But how?
Well, only 15% of Dubai population is native. ONLY 15%!
All the rest is composed by expatriates, which 51% are from India. Dubai is almost a second India at this point. Followed by Pakistan and Philipines. The other nationalities are a small %, but mainly Middle Easterns, British, Russians and Ukrainians.
Dubai doesn’t rely on oil anymore, but on services and tourism. They built their structure when they had oil and they were paying really low salaries to the workers. That reality still exist, because most of the menial workers have really bad salaries. If included the income of everyone living in Dubai, not only locals, Dubai wouldn’t have one of the highest income per capita in the world. It would be quite average.
More than half of the people living in Dubai are poor. Really poor. They have to live sharing rooms with 8 people, average. Only this way they can save money to send to their families. Despite the fact they live in poor conditions in Dubai, remember, it is still better than at their home.
The rest is tourism, the constant flow of tourists spending their money there is enough to keep the wheel spinning.
Having lived there for a few years, the kind of tourism that Dubai provides is not for my taste.
