And as someone who's grown up in Germany over the past couple of decades, you would also likely be
horrified by the criteria that an average far-right (North American) politician might want to use to define 'able-bodied':
@aimeeandbeatles,
@Valka D'Ur, and
@Synsensa would all likely 'qualify', simply because they can hold a coherent conversation, and walk without anyone else's assistance (at least on good days).
The biggest failure in determining "able to work" is the over-reliance on bureaucracy. Everything is coded and labelled a very specific way, and any kind of deviation puts you in appeals hell or outright disqualifies you. The system also has an incredibly unrealistic image of the job market. I have had someone seriously suggest to me, after me saying that I could work somewhere within a 10-minute walk for a couple hours a day with a lot of leeway in rescheduling (and never two days in a row), that I should do exactly that and that that means I'm not unemployable. Except that isn't what employers hire for; it's an employer's market, not an employee's, and they have no incentive to hire someone with so many conditions on their able employment when they can just open the meat grinder and take the first schmuck that comes through the door who'll drop everything on a whim for their boss and work odd, long hours. (I'm sympathetic to the employer, actually, on this. They shouldn't have to make their scheduling so intensely complicated to cater to someone who needs so many concessions.)
Personally, I think someone choosing to do nothing forever likely has some sort of disability affecting them. Humans, barring neurological complications or severe mental illness, have a primal drive to contribute or at least function. You see it all the time when people get injured or fired. They enjoy their "do nothing" stage... to a point. After a while, they become restless and they want to be involved. A total absence of that, I feel, is suspect, and simply attributing it to laziness doesn't work. Even slothful people have a limit to inaction.
Really, I don't think we're at the stage of society where people need to be going without. Our technology is advanced enough and our productivity is high enough in order to provide everyone a decent quality of life. We just aren't willing to do it. A significant percentage of the world is raised from birth to believe in corrupt ideas such as "personal accountability" (wherein the things that benefit you are conveniently forgotten, and anyone who is without is obviously so because they personally failed and deserve it) and "needing to earn your survival." People are taught to crush others where possible, to hoard advantages, and to "other" their peers. The notion of a state and society that cares for all is specifically labelled as weakness and snuffed out of juveniles who believe in it. Slowly more and more people are coming around to it, but it's nowhere near the point of becoming reality. Most progressives still believe in remarkably conservative and cruel ideas when it comes to support for all. They say they believe in it, but there's always an asterisk next to it with "Terms and conditions apply."
I also think that most incapable people can contribute, in their own way, with the right supports. The issue here is that the system doesn't want them to contribute in their own way with the right supports. The system wants them to contribute like a "normal person," despite someone with difficulties being automatically excluded from that category. This is another failure of bureaucracy. There's very little interest in individualized care and work. You are a number on an assembly line, nothing more.
