No country for old men...

     The Social Security system has been a panacea for the retiring masses who had no corporate supplied retirement bonuses, funds, and parachutes over the years it has been in place.
     Your father and mother very likely were very lucky to have had this to help them through their golden years.
This is not something that is negotiable in a free society.
If we need to fix it, so be it, but to abandon it?
     NEVER!

This is NOT the wild, wonderful expanse of land our forefathers came upon.
There are no "new Frontier"s to be settled, where a man can just pick up his belongings and head out west, get a scrap o' land, build a cabin with a couple head of cattle and rough out a life with nary a care in the world (seppin those dern Injuns might come in the night an scalp ya).

There is no such thing as "we're out here in the world alone, doing it by ourselves".
Everything you touch and see is there because of the efforts of ALL.
Your street.
The lights on your street.
The stop sign, the green light, the telephone and electrical wires coming to your house.

You would have NONE of these things were it not for the combining of the people's needs and interests to access services we could not afford to purchase individually.

Social Security and Medicare are the last two safety nets left to the working people of this Nation.
You will Rue the day you let them talk you into giving this up.
We all think that we will never use it, or we will never see it.
Both are wrong.
You have a plan for your life. Most of us do.
And if we keep doing the right things and are diligent, SOMETIMES we hit it right and things work out just grand for us.
But when the best laid plans go wrong, and believe me they do, at least you still have a safety net to fall back on.
If ALL else fails, you can retire at 65 and enjoy the last years of your life.
You won't have to be a greeter at Wallyworld when you're 75 because you don't make enough money to live on; PROVIDED you have been diligent all along and made good financial choices (paid your house off, payed into S.S., don't owe thousands to credit cards, etc).

But one bad accident can take it all away from you in a breath.
This is why single-payer health care is the next practical step for a progressive society.
This would secure our future in ways unimaginable to us now.
Could you quit your dead-end job and start your own company if you had health insurance, for yourself and your children, that followed you to whatever job you chose to work at, or whatever skill you choose to make a living at?

We need to put these options into action and move our communities toward healthy living.

If things keep going the way they are, and we get rid of the very things that keep us from drowning in debt when we are at our most vulnerable, this will be no country for old men (or women).