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


  • Socialist Workers Movement of the Dominican Republic
    Stop the Dominican Government's Violence and Racist Lies Against Haitian Pregnant Women
    26 Jul 2023
    The Dominican Republic’s racist President is once again scapegoating Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent for his government’s terrible economic policies. This time, his target is poor pregnant…
  • Peoples Dispatch
    Death Toll Mounts in Kenya as Police Intensify Crackdown on Protests Against US-IMF Backed Tax Regime
    26 Jul 2023
    Kenyans have been protesting President William Ruto’s Finance Act that increases taxes on essential goods while making concessions to foreign capital.
  • Jody Roumain
    Africa is Burning! DRC in Environmental Crisis
    26 Jul 2023
    Quiet as it’s kept, the African continent is the most susceptible to the impacts of climate change. And it has a history of colonialism, capitalist extraction, and labor exploitation to blame for…
  • Nick Corbishley
    Latin America Again Refuses to Fall In Line With the Collective West on Ukraine, This Time from Brussels
    26 Jul 2023
    The European Union failed to bully the members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) into renouncing its neutral stance on the Ukraine conflict.
  • Black Agenda Radio July 21, 2023
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio July 21, 2023
    21 Jul 2023
    Opposing the latest call for the invasion of Haiti, ending legacy admissions in New York, felony murder sentencing in Pennsylvania.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us