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


  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Debate: What are elephant excrement/donkey dung ‘Double-Hater’ Millions to do?
    03 Jul 2024
    "Debate: What are elephant excrement/donkey dung ‘Double-Hater’ Millions to do?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
    Political Deadlock Continues in Efforts to Open Peace Talks in Sudan
    03 Jul 2024
    The SAF still accuses the United Arab Emirates of supporting the RSF and the crisis continues for the people of Sudan.
  • Kossi “Ayomide” Paul
    France, its Far-right, and Africa: An Update on the Ongoing Parliamentary Elections
    03 Jul 2024
    France's recent parliamentary elections indicate a rapid political shift to the right. Africans both on the continent - where several nations remain French neo-colonies - and in France will…
  • Kevin Edmonds
    The Kenyan Intervention in Haiti: Another Wave of “Diplomatic” Terrorism
    03 Jul 2024
    The invasion of Haiti that has just begun with the arrival of Kenyan police, was long in the making. It is the end result of a long imperialist war of destabilization and propaganda against the…
  • Gus Griffin
    The Sports World’s Selective Moral Indignation Part II
    03 Jul 2024
    The imbalanced and prejudiced criteria by which the International Olympic Committee chooses to take action against countries reveals the political and moral inconsistencies…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us