Apparently, Germany had as similar idea as Smith, and as Toby explains:
The money he needs to financially sustain his chosen path he draws from the state under the Hartz IV programme. This programme does not permit you to work as you choose, but rather forces any type of work, often for €1 an hour, on those in need of its ‘largesse’. If you don’t work, you don’t eat, and the state gets to define, tightly, what is work, and what is not.And how will the state define "work"? To benefit corporations, of course!
Hartz IV is so draconian it actually contravenes the German constitution, the first line of which reads, “Human dignity is inviolable; it is the obligation of all state authority to respect and protect it.” Hartz IV cannot respect human dignity, since it proceeds from the highly dubious premise that any work at all, no matter how poorly paid, meaningless or socially harmful, is better than ‘lazing around doing nothing.’ Working as a sweeper at a sweet factory is work, raising your children is not. Hence, a person who signs on the dotted line of the “Eingliederungsvereinbarung” (“incorporation agreement”—actually, it’s not an agreement at all; refusal to sign incurs sanctioning, whereupon the contract is forced into effect anyway, just as a prisoner is forced to comply with prison rules he has not freely consented to) must take whatever work is given, or be sanctioned (which begins with a 30% reduction of income). Signing this ‘agreement’ also means you forgo your constitutional right to dignity (and other rights) set out in the constitution. Being sanctioned three times typically means becoming homeless and penniless, yet still you must adhere to the ‘agreement’ you may not even have signed. The numbers of homeless are rising in Germany, while, just as in the Great Depression, the stores are full.
