The problem isn't an academic one. Perhaps people don't quite have the mathematical fortitude to realize quite how magically compounding either works for or against you, but just the same as with diet, people inherently know that eating a whole cheesecake, or buying a $500 dress that looks amazing is a bad idea long term, but they just don't care. Cheating on spouses, using a pay day loan to finance your marching powder habit, short term gain for long term pain is the million year old lizard brain hard at work in it's glory mode.
At my old job where we did a lot of potentially dangerous things, we did a course on human factors/decision making. Largely common sense, but the big take away was that people only consider things that are certain, extreme, and timely. So how do you motivate people when that isn't the case? The answer was very, very difficultly.
Saving today is a certain short term loss - of social status, good times, good food, and good company. It will happen soon, it's certain that if you don't go you will miss out, and in hindsight not so much, it seemed pretty extreme when I was a teenager that I couldn't hang out with certain friends.
Contrast that with *probably* setting yourself up for future prosperity, but maybe not even that, just humdrum mustachian living, and it happens way down the line.
You see the same choices made over and over in realms of smoking, drug abuse, cheating on spouses or on tests, petty thefts and scams etc. People respond to short term, extreme, and certain motivators. The best thing that they did to lower smoking rates was make them cost $12 a pack. The equivalent of a clown car payment going out *today* to pay for your habit ironically motivates people a hell of a lot more than the prospect of being hooked to a machine while cancers eats away at your lungs in 40 years.
Unfortunately, there is a great big machine designed to separate you from your money, so it's in their short term interests to hide all the long term pitfalls, while maximizing the short term stimuli that turns on the lizard brain. "I want it now, and damn the expense!"
I'm not sure if it's true or not, but there are studies saying people are less happy and less connected than ever. I've read theories that this directly links to people's lack of happiness and fulfillment, and that the increase in financial, health, and substance problems we've been seeing in the past few decades are linked to people trying to satiate those issues with external means. Not sure, but food for thought.