A pension plan isn’t magic, it is just a fixed-income security. You can buy them on the private market. A pension can thus be converted to a dollar value and compared to a private sector job.

Total compensation is decent in the military, but imo it’s definitely not work the risks to life and limb if deployed. Any good soldier could probably make a lot more in the private sector for the same amount of work hours and stress.

I don’t know that this is true for all government jobs... I know that California and especially San Francisco have (or had) lavish compensation programs.