Indeed, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that these rules are the reason we have seen the widespread adoption over the years of employer matching contributions, automatic enrollment, automatic escalation of contributions, and numerous other innovations in the retirement plan space that have been shown to increase saving.
Under current rules, people who inherit IRAs can "stretch" their withdrawals across their life expectancies, paying income tax only on the amounts they remove from the account and continuing the tax deferral on any earnings inside.