If you are looking forward to an retirement pension, then you are reliant on the financial markets.
Private pension funds invest on the Stock Exchange, and buy Government Bonds in order to increase the pension of their members. Remember that, like the majority of us, the money you pay towards your pension weekly, or monthly will go nowhere near giving you a pension you can live on, after retirement. With PPF's, they raise the extra via the Stock Exchange, with government pensions, we pay the extra
The contributions we make from our wages to the government, in the form of NIC and taxes, are all spend as soon as they are received, if not before, by the government of the day. Among the things they spend it on, is the retirement pensions of those already retired. A large part of the governments income, includes taxes paid by those same financial institutions.
Money goes round, every time a penny turns it's head it is taxed, and on that fact alone, we finanace the world.