Nobody needs to work in USA either, but people do it anyway since the free stuff isn't comfortable enough. Its the same in Europe, people don't view the free stuff as good enough for them so they work to get more.
But then who's gonna be the delivery man who delivers your post/packages? Who's gonna be your teachers in school? Who's gonna be the baker making your food? Who's gonna be the builder and plumber building the shelter you live in? Who's gonna be the doctor healing you? If nobody needs to work.
They don't need to, they work anyway since we are still living in a capitalist nation where working pays off, that goes for both Europe and USA, you get supported by the state so you don't starve if you don't work but people still prefer working over not working thanks to the extra benefits you get.
Communist nations force people to work, there is no need for that in capitalist nations, people work for the extra rewards.
Yeah they do. I live in a socialist European country and if you refuse to work you'll end up on the streets and only live off charity of others or starve/freeze to death.
You won't get any state welfare if you're decaled medically fit to work and refuse to take work that get sent to you by the unemployment agency, like for example working in a warehouse or in an Amazon fulfilment center. Nobody would willfully take those shit jobs if they wouldn't have to work.
Yeah, there's some people who made a lifestyle out of gaming the system who choose not to work and still get welfare but that's a minority.
> You won't get any state welfare if you're decaled medically fit to work and refuse to take work that get sent to you by the unemployment agency
That depends on the country, but in the USA you get food stamps regardless of anything else so you wont starve. Then you can live on public lands in a tent or so, many do that in California.
> Virtually no one wants to live on the bare minimum
Many people prefer that to working.
The Seattle Times wrote an article decades ago where they interviewed a woman on welfare. They asked her what she'd do if her welfare was taken away. She replied "get a job".
They asked a couple of guys in a car with fishing equipment why they lived on welfare instead of getting a job. They replied that on welfare, they get to fish all day and enjoyed it.
I also knew a fellow for years who was on and off unemployment. He said he'd work at a job long enough to qualify for unemployment, then he'd f'up and get laid off. He'd then live off of unemployment, and would fail the requierd job interviews (amazing!). When that ran out, he'd have no trouble finding a job.
A friend of mine ran a nursery. He tried to hire a couple people who said they wanted the job, but would wait until their unemployment ran out before taking it. They were quite open about it.
Hence why I said "virtually", having a few anecdotes from interviews or from someone you knew doesn't cover it. Of course there will be people who choose to live on welfare, the vast majority would rather not. It's a small price to pay to have welfare programs saving countless lives from falling deeper into the hole of abject poverty... We just view this very differently, you prefer the "stick" approach, punish people who you deem unworthy because of their lack of motivation to work; while me on the other hand prefer the "carrot" where I think it's an okay price to pay to have some people choosing to not to work while society can protect people caught in bad times from falling away from the margins.
It's still absurd the straw man you created, please provide me data covering the whole population and we can discuss it, while it's based on these anecdotes you just being guided by your feelings and ideology.
Making people work is an assumption that work in itself is valuable, or at worse, mostly valuable. This isn't necessarily the case for jobs, and some jobs are probably actually detrimental to the well being of our society.
