[Frozenlock]

Sure, but it's not like we can just sit on our hands and wait until we are 100% sure of what we could do; the welfare state is already selecting for us. And in my experience, most people are opposed to getting rid of the welfare state.

This means that the choice is not "eugenic or do nothing", it's "eugenic or dysgenic".

[qb45]

Welfare states seem to depopulate recently so if it's true that they produce "unfit" people, they are harming more themselves than anybody else.

[burfog]

This is a short-term effect, and you have the fitness function backwards.

The portion of the population that takes action to avoid living in squalor is unfit because they fail to reproduce well enough for replacement. Meanwhile, the portion of the population that fails to avoid squalor is breeding in a most exponential way. That portion was historically kept in check by death, but now has been unleashed.

So one type of person is on the way to extinction, and another type is growing without bound. Currently this means the the total population (both groups together) is shrinking, but that will change.