Properties vs. Public Variables

I occasionally see code with properties like this:
private int name;
public int Name{
    get { return name; }
    set { name = value; }
}

Why waste everyone's time with a bunch of meaningless just-in-case wrapper code? Start with the simplest thing that works-- a public variable. You can always refactor this later into a property if it turns out additional work needs to be done when the name value is set. If you truly need a property, then use a property. Otherwise, KISS!
Update: As many commenters have pointed out, there are valid reasons to make a trivial property, exactly as depicted above:

• Reflection works differently on variables vs. properties, so if you rely on reflection, it's easier to use all properties.
• You can't databind against a variable.
• Changing a variable to a property is a breaking change.

It's a shame there's so much meaningless friction between variables and properties; most of the time they do the exact same thing. Kevin Dente proposed a bit of new syntax that would give us the best of both worlds:

public property int Name;

The really important thing to take away here is to avoid writing code that doesn't matter. And property wrappers around public variables are the very essence of meaningless code.