However, that is not what politics is (supposed to be) about. It is supposed to be about actionable policies and their effects. When putting this into an actionable public policy you run into many problems. How are you going to police the "except if they cannot work themselves" part? What are the requirements for "not being able to work"? How lenient are you there? What happens to people that fall through the cracks because of mistakes made in policing that (i.e. people that cannot get a job, but do not qualify for the help)?
How much money does it cost to police that, and what are the costs of not policing it at all? If the cost of policing is higher than the cost of not policing and just accepting that some people will take advantage of the system, is it still a good idea to police?
You can also contribute to society in ways that are not defined as work. What happens to someone that is taking care of children, or taking care of their sick parents? Should they be assisted financially, or not? If so, how do you define that?
Then there is the issue of automation. Perhaps people are not entitled to the fruits of other people's labor. But what about the labor of machines? As more and more jobs get automated, who is entitled to that? Should the owners of the machines reap all of the benefits while the rest of society is left with less and less as more and more jobs get automated away, or should this be divided amongst the total population?
Different people will answer all of these trade-offs in different ways, even if they may agree on the core view. Left-wing and right-wing people generally share most of their core views. Nobody wants more crime, more poverty, etc. The implementation of these policies are where disagreement and discussion happens.
There are countries that 'action' this exact policy. Take Australia for example. Unemployment payments are based on the concept of mutual obligation, where those receiving unemployment benefits must demonstrate that they are searching or training for future employment: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/topics/mutu...
Those who are unable to work, based on certain medical eligibility criteria, do not have to meet mutual obligation requirements to receive the disability support pension: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/ce...
> You can also contribute to society in ways that are not defined as work. What happens to someone that is taking care of children, or taking care of their sick parents? Should they be assisted financially, or not? If so, how do you define that?
Again, this is a policy question that is answered in Australia and which is implemented administratively via the 'carer payment': https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/ce...
I agree with your point that people will fall through the cracks and that there will be mistakes in administering any system like this. But that is simply the nature of a rules-based bureaucratic system, which trade off the ability to handle edge cases with scalability.
1. It's, in part, a thinly veiled program to transfer public money into the pockets of privately owned "Employment Service Providers"
2. It's offloading the "checking" to other private companies by way of requiring people to apply for a certain number of jobs. Any jobs. Maybe the same jobs you've been rejected for again and again so many times that HR recognizes your identical cover letters coming in every month.
3. Might be an extension of 1, but Employment Service Providers (private, for-profit companies) have the ability to report you to the government and get your payment cancelled for missing certain appointments, with little oversight and no repercussions for errors.
The whole employment services provider model is a weird frankenstein pseudo-market which operates according to bureaucratic rules and artificial 'prices'. And this model requires the bureaucracy to monitor the pseudo-bureaucracy (employment service providers) to ensure they're delivering employment services appropriately. The thinking behind this model is similar to arguments made in favour of privatisation - that private firms will always be more efficient than direct government service provision.
Lots of policy trade-offs to consider: Should government directly provide employment services or is a pseudo-private market more efficient? Should we just drop mutual obligation entirely at the cost of potentially higher structural and hardcore unemployment (and so higher government outlays on transfer payments)?
The devil is in the details. I could take this viewpoint and take several trade-offs on the implementation which would result in either extremely left-wing or extremely right-wing policies.
That's a central flaw in right-wing ideology. Society has never been fair, and probably never will be. People don't have the same opportunities in life, if nothing else due to the birth lottery. Adopting laissez-faire or "bootstrap" policies doesn't address this problem. As such, it very much is an irrational stance because it is incongruent with reality.
In other words, the right focuses on duty over rights, in extreme cases making welfare punitive. The left goes the other direction, focusing on rights over duty: government handout programs with few stipulations for the receiver.
The difference between the right and left here is that people on the right tend to presume fairness, and the left prescribes fairness - and conversely increasingly presumes oppression.
> the fruits of someone else's work
This is another, ignoring that we're social creatures and only thrived as a species because of co-operation. The left exaggerates in the other direction, pretending like we don't have a selfish gene and nowadays confusing outcome with opportunity. Individualism versus collectivism.
> efficiency
Yet the following are right-wing policies: teaching abstinence, the war on drugs, budget cuts to education... You might be right in some areas, but your definition of efficiency would need to be narrowed down specifically to budgetary efficiency.
In the context of your example, yes, it it more efficient to help someone financially while they're unemployed. It's also more efficient to decriminalise drugs and prostitution, to inform kids about sex and drugs, and to invest in education (as a proxy for success in life).
> common decency
Which has no objective definition by default.
I don't think there is such a thing as a political stance that is free from emotional axioms. At best, the political ideology can be internally consistent, with one point logically flowing from the basic principles, but there is always an external dependency on emotion. That said, there definitely is value in right-wing principles, just as there is in left-wing principles. The key is not becoming too entrenched or foaming at the mouth.
To be more fair, is better, in the sense that rewarding meritocracy is the goal, but even here there is a fundamental unavoidable unfairness born out of the natural talents and genetic predispositions of individuals making them uniquely advantaged for a given sport, field, career, etc.
However, I want to defend the idea that some right wing opinions make a lot of logical sense on their own; their being valid does not require right-wing-specific value systems.
Let's take one of the points you're criticizing.
> someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts
Here's the logic: the products and services we enjoy every day are all the product of someone else's work. None appear out of thin air. If they're provided by the government, they are still funded by taxes on the fruit of someone else's work. Why would someone who does not produce anything be entitled to any of it? The basic value behind this point is plain fairness, which everybody agrees on.
That being said, I will concede the above point needs refining and nuance before it can be used as a principle to guide public policy. For instance, it makes sense that society should help people who cannot work because of some handicap. The value here is common decency, which is neither specific to the right or the left.
Another refinement: what about people who are out of work and haven't found their next position? It's probably productive to help them with unemployment benefits: we can bet they will be back on their feet faster if they worry less about immediate money problems. The value here is efficiency. Of course, these benefits should be delivered under certain conditions, because the overall point regarding fairness still stands. They are not entitled to the fruit of someone else's work if they refuse to give back.
So here's the refined point:
In a fair society, people who are able to work but willingly refuse to do so should be not entitled to the fruits of someone else's work. However, people who are unable to work, whether permanently or temporarily, are excluded from this point and may be helped through the means of redistribution.
The final point is maybe a bit centrist, but still fairly right-leaning in its position. It's very logical, and only buttressed by the shared values of fairness, efficiency and common decency.