Once again, I ask for hard statistics and facts, with references. Data, my friend, show me the data.
What other data do you want? You ask for hard statistics but don't specify exactly what you statistics you want. I have no expertise in the area of social development, economics, or other social sciences. I'm a mathematician. The only hard data I can possibly give is to do a Google search. But you are just as well equipped to do this.
This forum is not an academic journal article. It's a collection of non-experts giving their opinions based on their perceptions of the world. The goal is to have a well reasoned position but the expectation for every opinion to be backed up by hard data, references, and statistics is not reasonable. No one can possibly be held to such a standard for all opinions.
Many, many issues are so complex that there is no obvious statistic that can be used to settle the matter. In such a case all one can do make a conclusion the best they can with the knowledge that they don't have all the information. But one is not then precluded from holding or expressing and opinion.
- USSR:
The USSR had a centrally planned economy, with centrallly planned wages designed to limit differentiation between those at the top of the income scale and those at the bottom. A typical family lived in a ~10x10 single room apartment. Often these apartments did not have kitchens, and never 'bedrooms' (I do mean 'single room.). Even though the workers were 'paid', they often could not buy basic things like food, soap, and toilet paper due to chronic underproduction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union
http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/06/revealed-the-final-stage-o...
http://articles.philly.com/1989-07-21/news/26131831_1_soap-p...
- Cuba
Cuba's economy is dominated by state-run enterprises, with 76% public sector employment. In Cuba, employees in some skilled professions that are not favored by the state, like medical doctors, work in slave-like conditions. GDP per capita is only $10k PPP, less than 1/5th that of the USA. References:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-ogrady-cubas-slave-trade-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
- China
In the mid 1990s, China's state-owned economy was teetering on bankruptcy. As an experiment, China began to allow select cities to ignore the old rules on enterprise management, wages, guaranteed employment, etc. By the late 90's, these cities had spawned some of the largest appliance manufacturers in the world, and China began to implement these policies more broadly. Since the reforms, China's GDP has risen tenfold, with productivity increases accounting for nearly half of the rise. During the reform period, PPP per capita incomes have grown at ~6.6% annually.
http://www.economist.com/node/21528262
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
That is what I would consider two well-documented examples countries with large social apparatuses that resulted in disaster, and one that significantly improved the standard of living for everyone by scrapping their old guarantees. I was hoping that you could provide me with something similar to support your views.
It seems as though you are under the impression that I was claiming the converse is true. I was not. Canada, Japan, Denmark, France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Austria are examples of countries that are nice places to live in for the average person that have a strong social safety net for the people.
Canada - much of the 'welfare' is paid by the province, not the federal government. The social assistance program is aimed at temporary financial need, and requires people to seek employment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_Canada
http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/social/
UK: https://www.rt.com/news/uk-welfare-jobless-benefits-535/
Japan - Japanese society actually attempts to shame people into going back into the workforce: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/09/25/national/media-n...
I don't have time to go down the rest of the list, but my point is that there are few, if any places where somebody can get a 'free ride' while doing little/no work, and certainly no place that's nice to live in (I'm assuming that since you think workfare is a bad idea, you consider 'good' to be the absence of a work requirement).