The nice thing about pensions is you can't redirect the money to increasing your competitiveness for scarce goods or advantages now, instead of saving it. "But

The nice thing about pensions is you can't redirect the money to increasing your competitiveness for scarce goods or advantages now, instead of saving it. "But isn't that a reduction of choice, so, a bad thing?" it would be, except that if enough of your peers also don't have that option, it means they can't outcompete you by harming their own retirement, so you don't need to do that in order to simply not fall behind. No more getting outcompeted for housing in good school districts because your peers are willing to live paycheck-to-paycheck and live on cat food in retirement, and you're not. And so on.