You seem to be under impression that underfunded pensions is some kind of a mistake, due to the lack of a system to create funded pensions. Not at all. People k

You seem to be under impression that underfunded pensions is some kind of a mistake, due to the lack of a system to create funded pensions. Not at all. People know how to save for the future, have known for millenia. The purpose of the defined benefit pension scheme is to cheaply promise massive benefits and to stick the next generation - when current politicians have retired - with the bill, thus keeping the employees content and happy without busting the budget and collecting exorbitant taxes. The fact that these benefits are not funded is not some omission that nobody noticed. It is by design. They do it not because nobody came to them and proposed your scheme, they do it exactly because they want to be in control of easily corruptible pots of money, and they do not want transparent and accurate accounting of the government costs, and do want manipulable numbers. And as long as people keep voting for those fraudsters, it will not change.