I don't like mean testing either. To come out on the good side of the mean test you have to be proved to be a bum. This is inherently demeaning even when it works in your favor. More often it excludes people who should be included.
Bates is a bozo who would "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel" (that's how Jesus reportedly described a fool).
The benefit should not be means tested, the retirement age should be lowered to 50 to end unemployment, and the benefit should provide a very comfortable living (though not more, of course).
The fix for social retirement programs (or any other kind of social program) is just to tax the rich very progressively, and for pete sake tax every buck they make with no crazy fat-cat exemption. It isn't rocket science. If the rich pay their fair share of the tax, I don't mind if they collect a social security check. Forget the means testing BS.
What, somebody's fortune wasn't built on the backs of poor laborers, consumers, and taxpayers? The rich OWE us. We should tax the bejesus out of them.
Or be their drooling collaborators and maybe they'll take good care of us in our old age.
Poor Richard