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


  • Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    We Win Peace When We Struggle for It: Cuba and the Zone of Peace
    22 May 2024
    Cuba hosted its international peace seminar during May Day celebrations on the island.
  • Essam Elkorghli
    Africa Liberation Day and the Necessity of Revisiting Our Compass
    22 May 2024
    African Liberation Day should serve as a time to ground ourselves in the history of our people and take those lessons with us as we continue the struggle toward liberation.
  • Julia Wright
    Ten Reasons the National Security State is Worried
    22 May 2024
    Recent global and domestic events have put the United States in a defensive posture that presents an opportunity for the movement to step up.
  • Willy Mutunga
    MUTUNGA: Impending departure of Kenyan police forces to Haiti
    22 May 2024
    Our future survival as a nation depends on what foreign policy decisions are made by our government
  • Hannah Natanson , Emmanuel Felton
    Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show
    22 May 2024
    A WhatsApp chat started by some wealthy Americans after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reveals their focus on Mayor Eric Adams and their work to shape U.S. opinion of the Gaza war.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us