OK, so raise the wages during the time they're working, in order to be competitive with other industries, and provide a 401(k) with matching contributions like

OK, so raise the wages during the time they're working, in order to be competitive with other industries, and provide a 401(k) with matching contributions like the private sector does. Except that will cause a tax increase now rather than a tax increase twenty years from now, and is political suicide. Underpay during working years and promise an outsized pension to make up for it (since that passes the buck of having to fund it to some other sucker who's in office much later on) is a common pattern in the public sector. If you want to end it, you can simply pay competitive wages up-front (and no, pointing to a handful of outliers does not indicate that the average public-sector salary is competitive with private sector).