If the Republicans want to change it, the status quo must be good, right?

What blind, partisan nonsense.

Washington must have money because of all the money it sends to Iraq? Huh?

Washington is broke partly because of all the money dumped down the Iraqi money pit. Ever hear the word "deficit"? Look it up. Red ink. DEBT.

Granny could have bought a house decades ago when the housing market wasn't insane like today, and been making her mortgage payments all this time if it weren't for the repressive burden of social security tax.

SS is not an insurance policy - it's an extortion racket. Insurance is voluntary. Extortion is compulsory. The mafia calls it "protection money". They're an old hand at this.

Privatization drives up rates? Only when conservatives use unwitting liberals as suckers, to hobble that privatization and support monopolies.

Look at food - privatization and free-market capitalistic competition has made food so plentiful in America that we are the global leaders in obesity, even to the point that obesity *among the homeless* is a serious problem!

You people who worship at the altar of centralized government domination of everything, should learn a little about a once-upon-a-time country that was all about centralization. It was called the USSR.

Ever hear about Soviet bread lines? Yeah. There's your DMV-quality food supply. Our privatized free-market grocery stores were an image of paradise to those poor saps.

And tell me something, why can't we have it both ways? Let me have my privatized social security, my privatized local organic farms, my privatized bike shops, my privatized independent book stores, my privatized mom-and-pop coffee shop.

In return, I'm perfectly willing to let you have your DMV-quality retirement program, with your DMV-quality project housing, your DMV-quality bread, your DMV-quality schools.

Why won't you respect me as an individual and let me choose for myself how I eat, save, and live?

Social security should be abolished. It's time the government learned to hold bake sales to fund its mismanaged, ill-conceived wars and charities. Far fewer people would be dependent upon SS if they were allowed to manage their own damn money, instead of Big Brother telling us all our lives that we're unable to think for ourselves.