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


  • Protest for Eritrea
    Dr. Fikrejesus Amahazion
    Eritrea's Defiance and Independence Remain Its Supreme Crime
    10 Oct 2023
    Eritrea has been the target of a media campaign orchestrated by the US and its allies who act in collusion with corporate media. These narratives demonize Eritrea and seek to weaken this country…
  • Kenyan High Court
    Dzyuya Walter
    High Court Blocks Deployment Of Kenyan Police To Haiti
    10 Oct 2023
    The Kenyan government has been temporarily blocked from sending a police force to occupy Haiti, a U.S. instigated plot to undermine the sovereignty of that nation.
  • Cover of "Thinking While Black"
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Daniel McNeil’s Book, “Thinking While Black”
    10 Oct 2023
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Daniel McNeil. McNeil is a professor in the Department of History at Queen’s…
  • Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People's Socialist Party
    David S. D'Amato
    The FBI’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent
    10 Oct 2023
    The indictment of the Uhuru 3 is part of a long history of persecution and prosecution of the Black liberation movement.
  • Drawing of woman in front of a fire
    James Patrick Jordan
    Don’t Be Confused About Haiti
    10 Oct 2023
    The lies that are told about Haiti are so deeply ingrained that people who should know better believe that the next occupation will cure all of that country's ills. In fact, Haiti's problems are the…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us