I was also watching C-SPAN this morning (which I often do; it's fun to hear the crazy people call in and rant on and on about their wacky theories), and saw a woman who heads a group dedicated to the preservation of Social Security and Medicate. As a sophomore I rebutted a congresswoman at a Yale Political Union debate (I forget who) who was defending those programs, and to this day I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to my points.

First of all, when Social Security was created few people lived to the retirement age at which you could start receiving your benefits. That's why it was such a light burden of tax payers: old people had plenty of young people around to support them. As time passed, the number of old people grew, leading us to the situation we're at now. The program will go bankrupt very quickly because people don't pay into their own personal accounts, they're paying for the previous generation. If there are ever too many old people relative to the workers still paying into Social Security (we're getting there), the system falls apart.

Plus, centralized benefit plans like this cannot work, period (here's a good essay on universal health care from mises.org; this is an issue which is fast becoming a campaign topic for Democratic presidential hopefuls). There are plenty of articles out there about the mess that the Canadian health care industry has become. Why is that whenever a rich foreigner gets sick he always comes to America for health care despite the universal systems that might be in place in his own country?

People need to have a health dose of faith in the free market. Look at computers, and how the market has allowed them to get ever cheaper despite the fact that computers are better and faster than ever. Look at ebay, which is wildly popular and a center for good and responsible transactions despite the fact that it's unregulated. People can usually manage just fine when they're left to their own devices. It's about time people realized that.