Within the next few years Congress will fix the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. They will do it mainly by raising payroll taxes and ending the payroll tax cap on high earners. They may even toss in a value added tax. And means testing might also be in the mix. Neither republicans or democrats will vote against it.
But who determines your “means”? But here is a story that happened to me, worked for a guys Company in a small town for almost 30 years as one of the managers. His Company grew well over time with the managers he hired to run it and he was taking home a million a year and was paying his wife(who actually did nothing for the Company) half a million for at least 20 years. One day he decided to sell out and told all of the managers that they needed to cooperate with the sale and they would be rewarded with 1 to 1.5 and never have to work again. On the day the sale closed and he got his 80 something million, only two of the managers got what they were all promised, his brother and his brother in law. All the rest of the managers got a years pay, and the government took a third of it off the top, and they all started working for the Company that purchased them(their biggest competitor). Fast forward to a few years later and not one of them is still employed there. Anyway, the point is that this owner and his wife put enough into SS to max out so they both to this day receive the max amount of SS every month. Because the 80m from the sale and the 20 they already had wasn’t enough? No, because that is the way SS is set up to operate. Seems to me that maybe in cases like this, SS should only be paying back what was put into it?