Much of our best art, invention and other creativity was produced by people who were, at most, very unsure of being paid for it. They worked for the love of it, not because they expected a profit. We force them to commercialize it by making it necessary for their basic needs, and thereby economically justify a lot of bad art. Much of this kind of productivity would be greatly improved if the artist felt more secure about his necessities.
What concern we do have for the "temporarily non-productive" is expressed in a hodge-podge of conflicting, inefficient programs. We make it difficult for people on welfare to get off it, by reducing their welfare checks if they get a part-time job. Meanwhile, expenses of getting and holding a job quickly eat up the combined income. We want to keep them on welfare, partly as scapegoats, and partly because the national economic picture looks better as long as they "stay in their place" rather than be included in the official unemployment statistics.
On the other hand, there's a big gray area between welfare of various forms and artificial life support, which doesn't appeal to most people today (at least until they find themselves needing it). The purpose of welfare should be rehabilitation, making it possible for potential workers to get back on their feet and contribute to the community. We need to teach the value of working for the good of the whole.
Let's get honest and create a workable and efficient welfare system. The system I would support might be seen as capitalism for the rich and socialism for the poor (for which the rich and middle class would pay, as usual, but costing less than today's systems).
A progressive government should include an efficient, holistic system which offers the necessities of life, and more, to all its citizens with no questions asked, while allowing them to work for luxuries. "Necessities" include food, shelter, clothing, medical care... "And more" includes toilets, soap, showers, haircuts, birth control (including abortion), child care, education, counseling... "Medical care" could cover many special individual needs. Luxuries are anything not appropriate to the above categories.
Few of these benefits would be in the form of money, which is inherently capable of being mis-used (at all levels) for socially non-productive addictions such as booze, drugs, guns and the lottery. Some people, especially welfare workers, say such a system would detract from the recipients' dignity. Where's the dignity in the present system where they must beg and lie for inadequate benefits? Many people are on welfare because they never learned to handle money well. But many more, including myself, would take part in a socialized welfare system at least part of the time, thereby reducing the stigma. As more people transferred from make-work jobs to this system, society would become more efficient.
Recent Addendum: Basic benefits would be free, but some less basic, less "productive" and more "luxurious" would be on a sliding scale of increasing percent-of-cost co-payments. True, not all medicines, life-extension techniques and such would not be affordable to all, but certainly more so than now.
Students are one exception. They should be paid to get an education, since they are spending their time and energy to increase their value to society. Pay should be a function of their level of learning and their grades. Grades should also be used, when possible, to decide how quickly to advance the student.
This system would control the statistical numbers of people getting benefits, or going into different fields of study, by adjusting the attractiveness of the various benefits (though the functional value would remain). This would still leave the final decision up to the individual.
It would increase occupational mobility and force employers to use more humane employment policies, meaning less need for labor unions and strikes. Rather than the "collective workforce" demanding across-the-board improvements in working conditions, workers could effectively negotiate as an individuals.
It would also at least reduce the need for the minimum wage. When the minimum necessities of life cost the individual nothing, the minimum wage should also be zero. Minimum wage creates a gap between those who work for money and volunteers who work for nothing, and motivates employers to find ways around it. (Logically, shouldn't the principle of minimum wage make volunteering illegal?)
If it were to become medically possible, with no unwelcome side- effects, I would support including an easily canceled contraceptive in the free food, affecting both men and women. Then a recipient would have to take some small extra action to have a baby instead of to avoid it. (The contraceptive would of course be freely available to all.)
A compassionate government should keep up-to-date files on the location and special needs and abilities of all sorts, of all its citizens who are willing to participate in such a program. Under such a system, all would profit by it and the program would grow.
My first feeling is that cities should provide these services. I fear that a relatively good, caring, local social services program would simply go broke as it attracted poor people from all over the country, but I'm told that's not a significant factor. (Do the cities possibly reap the benefits quickly enough from rehabilitating those who formerly fell through the cracks?) If it is a problem, it should be done on a national level to take advantage of the national immigration control system (for what it's worth these days) until we can have it world-wide.
Instead of thinking in terms of some people working while others loaf, think of the average adult working, say, three months out of the year and spending the rest of the time going to school or in constructive volunteer activities. When a welfare recipient is not penalized for working, there will be more continuity, from total dependence on welfare to total independence, as well as more flexibility and variety of job situations.
If you wonder where the money would come from for such a system, consider how much we now spend on the "benefits" and make-work jobs it would replace. Less expense would be put into the free benefits than into their luxury equivalents, so the more people that receive necessities free, the less money and energy we waste producing luxuries. How much of today's "GNP" is spent on competition and how much on quality of life? An economist thinks in terms of money flow. Think instead of information exchanged, consciousness expanded and other goals attained, versus energy expended.
Most big economic changes should be "phased in" rather than changed all at once. The latter simply starts a pendulum swinging. It's sort of like a too-powerful heating system with a thermostat back in a cul-de-sac, which raises the room temperature to 90 degrees before the thermostat has time to respond. If liberal measures are passed too suddenly, conditions of the poor will get better for a while, but the conservatives will gain more power and soon they'll have the benefits below where they were. It would be better if we could stop the pendulum from swinging so far, with legislation which states that major economic factors can't be changed by more, say, than 2% per year (after inflation adjustments). Then we would stay closer to the compromise which is most satisfactory to most people. A new law might require a a steady incremental increase over 20 years, and our social "thermostat" (econostat?) would have a chance to readjust before changing conditions became extreme.
Therefore, changing to a socialized welfare system would involve temporarily maintaining present systems, while opening up an increasing number of government-subsidized restaurants, shelters, clothing outlets, hospitals and schools, then expanding and integrating government surplus food programs etc.
The Declaration of Independence talks of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were born into a society created by people who claim to believe in these rights. We as individuals have little control over it, and are taught to depend on it totally. Therefore the controllers of that society have the responsibility, and the need, to at least be sure we have the necessities of life.