They are just another tax like income taxes, estate taxes, aviation taxes, business taxes, and fuel taxes. Your money and mine has long ago been spent on anything and everything congress can dream up to get votes in return for passing out little financial goodies to their constituents. I would like all of my money back too with interest, but its a lost cause now. The government is broke, in debt way past it's eyeballs, and cannot pay it's current obligations without borrowing $0.40 of every dollar it spends. If you think SS and Medicare will be around in 10-20 years if the nation doesn't collapse before then, you are very likely to be disappointed. Where do you think the $115 trillion in unfunded liabilities is going to come from when we take in $2.5 trillion in revenues and spend $3.9 trillion just in 2011?