Earlier quoted context omitted.
401k is government backed. The name itself refers to the law that brought them into existence. Just as Roth IRAs are named for the Senator who proposed them. Without the backing of the government, your retirement plan would solely consist of what you save and you'd be taxed on it all along the way.
I'm not sure that's what was meant by government backed. The government doesn't pay for your retirement fund, a Roth IRA just doesn't charge tax on withdrawals.
The compensation rate for all such items might thus become far more standardized, and all of the bureaucratic conformance for such items would be there as well.
This would be an exceedingly small business friendly move as suddenly a lot of the headaches of employing someone would just be paid for with a simple 'tax'.
It would also be very worker friendly as all of those things and seniority/etc would similarly be paid for with that 'tax'.
This does assume that there's a uniform allocation of resources per employee (I know there isn't today), or that there's a standard appreciation track for employees (there isn't today)... or that there might be multiple standard ranks of benefits (which would need to be more clearly advertised in job descriptions)...
However everything really would be easier for everyone if we actually had this system; the only entities that would benefit from the status quo in a meaningful way are large corporations with enough employees to justify full time HR and legal staff.