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Anyway, the thing that kills me about ss and all the other entitlements is that they are forced charity and an awfully inefficiant charities at that.

Ehhhhhnnnnt!!!! Wrong. Medicare is actually 97% efficient. That is, only $3 of every $100 collected is used for administrating the benefit. The rest goes back out to health care. Blue Cross is lucky if they achieve 90% efficiency.

My only question is why can't I opt out.

Because you are part of society, benefit from it, and you have to sacrafice. It's part of you being an American citizen.

Just like you can't opt out of school taxes. . .if you don't use the schools. Or opt out of general taxes, because you don't use the roads.

How come if I get a job pretty much anywhere in the united states do I have to pay into it.

See above.

Here is another, very important, thing to think about. How in the world did the United States go a 150 years without these programs? What happened to the poor then.

Prior to SSI, being elderly was almost synomous with being poor. Prior to Medicare. . .people's life savings and inheritances to their 17 year old clueless sons or grandsons were wiped entirely out by the last 2 weeks of medical bills.

Why?

Because who in their right mind would insure a 70 year old male with diabetes, high blood pressure, and prostate hypertrophy?

Would you open up an insurance co. that did that?

If you did, you'd be out of business in 3 months.

This is why Medicare has to be a welfare state and private insurance can't do the job.

They can't even do the job on a 40 year old male anymore.

They did not starve to death.

No, we are the land of plenty. . .but many elderly went hungry and without meds. Lifespans were shorter.

So, the argument that we absolutley need these programs doesn't work as we went without them for so many years.

There's a great book you should read - "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!" by Otto Bettman (do an amazon search).

You are glorifying the Good Old Days as per the Archie Bunker song ("Boy the way Glenn Miller played") but in reality, they were times of retched poverty, public disease, crime, forced child labor.

It was because of socialized programs (yup. . .I guess socialism) that American society advanced.

It's a bitter pill to swallow because I like to think capitalism solves everything.

It's just unfortunately not true.