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


  • Former Teacher Shani Robinson Tells Her Story of Prosecution By Fani Willis
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Former Teacher Shani Robinson Tells Her Story of Prosecution By Fani Willis
    01 Sep 2023
    Shani Robinson taught in the Atlanta, Georgia public school system.
  • Gun Violence and Racism
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gun Violence and Racism
    01 Sep 2023
    Dr. Nicole Price is the Forbes Books author of Spark The Heart: Engineering Empathy In Your Organization.
  • Exonerations in New York State
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Exonerations in New York State
    01 Sep 2023
    Nick Encalada-Malinowski is Director of the Civil Rights Union campaign at Vocal-NY.
  • The Climate Crisis Will End When Capitalism Ends
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Climate Crisis Will End When Capitalism Ends
    30 Aug 2023
    The climate emergency won't end because of heartfelt pleas to the people and the interests who created the crisis. Ecocide will stop when capitalism ends.
  • EDITORIAL: Joanne Little: American Goes on Trial, Freedomways, 1975
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EDITORIAL: Joanne Little: American Goes on Trial, Freedomways, 1975
    30 Aug 2023
    To mark the last days of Black August, we reprint below Freedomways’ 1975 editorial about Joanne Little, a Black woman indicted for killing her white prison guard and would-be rapist.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us