An article in The Atlantic makes the well-worn argument that America needs to stop subsidizing seniors and put more money into younger folks. Does that make sense?
Yes and no. It is true that many seniors own their own homes and some stocks; they have benefited disproportionately from the price increases of the last decade. There are millions of other seniors, however, who do not own homes or stocks and depend almost entirely on Social Security and Medicare. Cutting those programs to alleviate poverty among younger people would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Means testing Social Security would be a reasonable possibility, but only for the truly affluent, which means the cost savings would be relatively minimal. As for Medicare, there is no viable market for health care for the elderly; that is why the program was created in the first place. Would it really make sense to put even middle-class seniors at the risk of ruin from medical expenses?
The truth is that the Medicare problem is one of soaring unit costs and demographics, not senior greed, and the increased wealth of seniors is due to fairly unique conditions that could change dramatically overnight, as with the falling home prices during the Great Recession. To the extent the problem needs to be addressed, it should be by imposing higher taxes on capital gains for all wealthy people, not by cutting or means testing Social Security.
Oh, and by the way, a massive transfer of wealth to the younger generations is about to unfold as a result, not of government policy, but of extinction. Just be patient, folks. Your time is coming.