Taxes fund current military expenses. Pensions are designed to fund tomorrow’s expenses with today’s money. You need some sort of instrument to do that. If you

Taxes fund current military expenses. Pensions are designed to fund tomorrow’s expenses with today’s money. You need some sort of instrument to do that. If you don’t save current resources for future expenses, then you risk needing a very large future amount of the tax base for pensions. If, for example, more people retire. Even for the military they used war bonds and took on debt in wars when the wars demanded outsized current expenses. They didn’t just raise taxes really high in WWII to pay for everything. They paid for it over time with bonds. The Soviets did the same in agreeing to repay lend lease bonds.