Actually, coming from a country with a high minimum wage ($16/hr+), the idea of a company paying some otherwise-unemployable warm body $5/hr to stand at the door and do nothing all day except say hello to indifferent customers seems bizarre to me - not to mention demeaning and perverse.

Our unemployment benefit is $6.20 an hour. I'd rather the poor guy stays at home, works on his novel or something, and keeps his dignity.

Staying at home means watching TV for a lot of unemployed people. Getting any job is often better.

Agreed. One of the problems with some of the welfare models is that it's often very hard to get people out of them once they've adapted to being jobless and doing nothing.

Well, yes, that's definitely an issue. But some people, you know, they're just hopeless and they wouldn't do anything productive anyway. May as well have them watching television, at least they won't go crazy with resentment after being forced to be a freaking greeter for 5 years.

And not all people will be like that. If just 1 in 5 people get bored, start studying, turn their life around and start pulling $120k, their tax pays for the other 4, plus the GDP per capita of the five quadruples.

It can and does happen. I know a guy who was an unemployed bum for a few years, then got bored, spent 2 years teaching himself computer animation, then got a job at a major animation studio (two of their productions playing in cinemas now). He probably "paid back" that measly trickle of benefit payments in 1 year.

I pretty much support an untested basic payment for all low income earners, actually, because of that and other experiences. Just gives people a base, a safety net. They might want to do nothing but watch TV, but they might want to do something good, too. Just gives people the support they need. And because of human nature, and general societal pressure to succeed, people do step up, eventually.

(edited to remove potentially identifying personal information)

which country?

Australia.

The UK may be technically in the EU, but it is not European in currency or culture. It's much much more American than the other EU members.

"European" culture is much more diverse than a lot of people think, including a lot of people in Europe.

I find that people that talk about "European" culture tend to refer to the culture of western part of continental Europe, usually excluding Eastern Europe, Turkey, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland etc.

But even with a view that limited, there are vast cultural differences even within that group.

There is no unified European culture (nor currency). There are certain limited areas where different but large subsets of Europe share common ideals, but that's it.