Cultural Differences - Liberal vs Conservative

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I agree. But the issue is often how you define "cannot work".

It's a very nuanced topic, more than you might think.

I'm a Dane. In Denmark we have multiple benefits ranging from basic unemployment benefits (literally translated to "Cash Assistance") and "Regular Unemployment Benefits", to Unemployment Benefits during Temporary Sickness and "Long term Sickness Benefits" and lastly two types of Disability Benefits: Flexible Jobs as well as Disability Pension.

Every benefit, except Disability Pension, requires work in return for benefits. If you don't work, you don't get your benefits.

In general, if you're assessed, you'd either be on "Cash Assistance" or Sickness Uemployment benefits, until you can get the Long term Sickness Benefits. Then it will be decided if you can work 1 hour or more/a week and have a potential to increase that further up within a "reasonable time period" (not defined! - It can be months or even years) you can get a Flexible Job of 1 hour/a week.

If the condition is permanent, and you can only work few hours a week (again, undefined, but usually it's about 5 hours/week) - and everyone agrees that the condition is permanent, you can get a Disability Pension. This can be re-assessed after a period, usually 3 or 5 years later, but it depends on whether your condition has an unpredictable outcome or not. Most people who get re-assessed their pension end up with it permanently, but in any case the law states that if you get a better work-capability than when you got your Disability Pension, it will be re-assessed and you can lose it.

However people on Disability Benefits may still perform voluntary work, whatever they're capable of.
Though, if their condition permanently gets better, they can lose their Disability Pension.

Now, it's these two undefined terms and hours which are open to interpretation. And usually the authorities have a very strict definition of those.

Yet, despite all these regulations and assessments, politicians from the Right insists that people who are sick and permanently disabled and live on Disability Pensions should be tested and re-assessed more and more. It never stops.

There is only one thing which can satisfy the Right-wingers: A complete abolition of Disability Benefits and having voting restrictions to those receiving Unemployment Benefits of any kind.

This is why I go to the other extreme: I demand that UBI should be a universal right for every citizen.

I'm so sick and tired of this disability-bashing in my country. It happens not only in Denmark. I've watched the news on BBC how they did it in the UK where they literally committed genocide on disabled people who could not work. People with severe health conditions were forced into working conditions which only worsened their health and even killed them, despite doctors warnings (or perhaps BECAUSE of doctors warnings...).

You can just google "Atos Death Toll".
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... wp-figures

The Danish Employers Organizations wants the Atos Death Toll to happen in Denmark as well. That's evil.

it needs to be said that there is not a GD thing wrong with laziness. so there. i'm lazy (but i prefer the term "energy conservation"), and anybody that doesn't like it can go suck a big rotten egg.

@thinkinginpictures
I want to express some empathy for your frustration and worry about the lines and decisions involved with enforcing them.

I deal with a lot of depression, which is a very invisible disability and that does definitely hinder my ability to work productively. I only end up working all night because I just couldn't get my act together long enough, early enough to get things done when I should have. When I say I work hard, it isn't as much in pure, productive hours as it is pushing and pulling myself against everything inside me that would rather pull inwards inside my own head instead of outwards, able to do what needs to get done. I'm lucky that I can succeed against the gravitational pull inwards long enough to produce work that others are willing to pay a premium for ... and to wait for. Not everyone is so lucky, and I do know that. I do believe we have a duty to make sure those people are able to live and find a way to contribute regardless of what their own struggle is.

The problem is with quantifying that, and with leaving the determination in someone else's hands. Universal basic income removes the judgement, and simply provides a guarantee. Removing the arbitrary decision making and judgment is a good thing. That is a strong "pro" argument for UBI. Put the judgement removal argument together with the economic one, of what happens when your remove stress from people's lives, and the idea of UBI clearly has merit.

The offset is that different people have different motivations and goals. I've met people who lack any desire to challenge themselves, ever, in any way, and glide through the world expecting things to be handed to them not because they need it, but because they feel "entitled." They have bought into inaccurate assumptions about pretty much everything, and don't have the slightest clue how to be grateful, nor do they understand how fulfilling being productive based on your own merit and hard work can be. It is literally harmful to their lives to hand them anything. It stalls their development as people.

The two concepts are always at war with each other.

No one looking at either should do so without some understanding of the other. Both are essential to making decisions about any social program as norm-bustingly large as UBI.

When you talk about "freedom to not work," you call up images of the self-entitled, not of the those unable to work productively for invisible reasons. As someone who lives right on the line between being able to work and not, always having to push myself over it, I can't help but resent the concept. It's like telling me my entire life struggle was built on a lie. You have to understand that most people live some version of playing with that line, yet they get themselves over it. That is why patience towards those who aren't willing to make that push wears thin. To choose your own freedom at the cost of your neighbor's freedom is not acceptable. The difference between "I could push but don't want to" and "I'm trying to push but can't get there" is a very fine line that is difficult to place accurately, but it exists and it has to be acknowledged.