@Cedarford:
No, cedarfors, your particular notion of competitiveness as applied to both individual human persons as well as to nations/societies as a whole in a vulgar-Darwinian fashion is highly reminiscient of the Nazi ideology which was also based (in parts) on an early 20th century popular misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution. In your sentence the use of “nation will be less competitive” in the context of breeding just replace “nation” with “race” and you’ll see what I mean.
Let me add that I couldn’t care less about the U.S. debt since I am not American nor do I live in the U.S. But your debt has less to do with the ridicoluously low social security level that exists in the states and much more with military spending, which, alas, is necessary for a de-facto hegemonial power (and before you attack me for that, I am aware that Europe is free-loading on this by outsourcing security as a whole and security of e.g. shipping lanes to the U.S., and I am grateful for that).
As for the high cost of the U.S. medical system: trying to get rid of the preposterous ligitation system in your country might help quite a lot. Just my two cents. 
Let’s go back: nations are not business, thank God for that. Nations also built on a concept that might be alien to you, namely that of a hierarchy of communities, which – shockingly – tend to be rather altruistic.
So go ahead, build a fully rationalistic society, you’ll end up in either 1984, Stalinist Russia, Hitlerian Germany, or, most probably in something resembling Samjatin’s “We”.
And, by all means, read “Mein Kampf”; if you ignore the anti-semitic drivel you might find a lot to like, especially the idea of “optimizing” the inhabitants of one’s country (read the local “race”) to be able to compete with the other nations with their respectively optimized “racial” content.
The religious dogma & fanaticism card doesn’t do the trick in my case, since I am a typically lack-luster European lapsed Roman Catholic who doesn’t care much what the Church says but is still registered somewhere despite being an agnostic … everything I want to say that religions do carry some human wisdom brought down through the ages that you only should completely discard at your peril. The same, btw, goes for folk tales and ancient mythologies: a lot to learn about the conditio humana since time immemorial from that.
(And I’ll tell you a secret: I am even pro-choice up to week 12 of pregnancy; after that any fetus, disabled or not, that doesn’t endanger the mother’s life should be off-limits in my opinion.)
To summarize: in denying certain human beings the right to live on economic or eugenic grounds you are indeed stepping on a slippery slope which in the end leads to the horrors witnessed e.g. in the Nazi regime. There’s no evading it. And in the end, when you yourself somehow reach the limit of your “usefullness” you will be disposed of just like that; that’s the society you are advocating.
Tri21X2 is right on this: read Peter Singer, his prose is not as tortured as Hitler’s but he reaches much of the same conclusions on the value of human life plus he has my respect for rigorously following the rationalistic concept through to its logical end.
Good night to you, cedarford, unfortunately it’s already past bedtime over here in the Old World …
