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


  • The Editors
    Black Agenda Report July 4th Special Issue
    01 Jul 2026
    “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Barack Obama, George Washington and the 4th of July
    01 Jul 2026
    The opening of the Obama Center has brought Barack Obama back into the spotlight, although he offers nothing new. He will be in the pocket of the oligarchy for the rest of his life, and that means he…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LYRICS: Bicentennial Blues, Gil Scott-Heron, 1976
    01 Jul 2026
    “George Washington/Slave-owner general/Ironic that the father of this country/ Should be a slave owner/The father of this country a slave-owner.”
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    F$$K the Fourth: Declaring Our Collective Independence from the Sinking Ship of U.S. Empire
    01 Jul 2026
    The settler colonial state is now more corrupt and more unequal than even the genocidal "founding fathers" imagined.
  • Jacqueline Luqman
    Disaster Capitalism In Haiti Gives A Glimpse Into the Imperialist Shock Doctrine That Could Rattle Venezuela Long After The Earthquakes
    01 Jul 2026
    The U.S. has attacked Venezuela through various means for decades and kidnapped President Maduro but is now claiming to assist with earthquake relief. If it's role in Haiti is any guide, that so-…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us