Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Those Ever-Shrinking 401Ks and the Theft of Retirement Security
21 Dec 2011
🖨️ Print Article

For most of the 20th century, until the 1980s, each generation of retirees had a somewhat higher standard of living than the last.  With the Reagan era advent of federal policies encouraging private employers to raid and discontinue defined benefit pensions, that trend stopped.  The current generation of retirees are discovering that their 401Ks are almost never sufficient to allow a dignified retirement.  They've been robbed.  401Ks are subject to the stock market, which favors insiders, and financial managers and the retirement-industrial complex extract as much as a quarter of all 401K savings in parasitic fees.  In this Against the Grain interview James Russell explains why Wall Street loves privatized and individual retirement accounts, and hates defined beneift pensions and social security,



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://www.againstthegrain.org/files/files/atg/atg_2014.11.12_401ks.mp3

More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    NYC’s Congestion Pricing Program Comes with the Cost of Sacrificing Constitutionally Mandated Human Rights of NYC’s Environmental Justice Communities
    08 Jan 2025
    NYC's new congestion pricing program has grave environmental justice implications for poor, working class, and Black communities which will be subjected to increased pollution and poor air quality.
  • Erica Caines
    Bound by Imperialism: Trinidad’s Role in U.S. Agenda
    08 Jan 2025
    Trinidad is experiencing an unprecedented crime wave. The state has responded by militarizing the police and loosening restrictions on their actions. To understand these mechanisms, one must look at…
  • Janvieve Williams Comrie
    The Unrelenting Violence Against Black Youth in Latin America: a Focus on Ecuador
    08 Jan 2025
    The murder of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys is another tragic example of the long history of racism in Latin America. The utter disregard for the lives of Black youth and the refusal to seek justice for…
  • Arnold August
    Liberal Media and Personalities: The Bigger They Are, the Harder They Fall
    08 Jan 2025
    On Dec 11, 2024, it was reported that the post-election audiences for the leading liberal media, MSNBC and CNN, continued to drop: 46% and 33%, respectively. Some of MSNBC’s biggest stars, including…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    F Train Lynching: Papa Cop’s wink and nod
    08 Jan 2025
    "F Train Lynching: Papa Cop’s wink and nod" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us