I will never sign up for government benefits. I know it’s an old-fashioned artifact these cynical post-modern days, to be sneered at as being stupid, not taking what’s there to be had, but there is such a concept as honor. Useless, outmoded, almost a luxury item now, if there was a market for such a useless thing.
Does that include not signing up for Social Security?
How about looking at it as a weapon. Break the back of the beast. Use Cloward Piven strategies against them.