>>510105426 (OP)NEETs are a deceptive statistic.
A lot of people just live off their parents' backs even if they do some work here and there. If you don't make a living wage and work 3 times per week or 2 weeks per month, you're more or less living like a NEET. Another category is people who work 3 months per year and then NEET for the rest of the time.
Yet another and most numerous, are people who worked for years, but now are chronically unemployed and go between benefits, selling drugs, flipping goods, mooching etc.
Then there are the actual criminals. Pensioners. Housewives. Students in gap years or doing courses that will lead nowhere. Hippies, people who are actually too sick to work, etc.
NEETing alone is just one variant of social disfunction. Fundamentally, societies are not built on survival. They're built on participation. Once you're out working you realize that the majority of the population is actually a NEET or chronically underemployed, or mocching off the system in some way. Probably 1 in 3 people you'll meet are actually fully employed and live on a wage/honest business. The dumb wagie slaves that are squeezed like lemons to keep the gig going.