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


  • Hurricane Harvey and his destructive siblings...
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Hurricane Harvey and his destructive siblings...
    12 Oct 2022
    Hurricane Harvey and his destructive siblings...
  • Red Alert...
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Red Alert...
    12 Oct 2022
    Red Alert...
  • BAR Book Forum: Interview with Jon Jon Moore
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Interview with Jon Jon Moore
    12 Oct 2022
    This week’s featured scholar is Jon Jon Moore. Moore is a writer and host of the AbolitionISH podcast. His article is “Starships and Slave Ships: Black Ontology and the UFO Abduction…
  • Dominican Republic: President Abinader's Anti-Haitianism
    Ana Belique
    Dominican Republic: President Abinader's Anti-Haitianism
    12 Oct 2022
    Luis Abinader, president of the Dominican Republic, continues that country's tradition of enacting anti-Haitian policies.
  • To Solve the Crisis Permanently, Force the US to Stop Backing Notorious White Warlords in Haiti, Part I
    Jafrikayiti
    To Solve the Crisis Permanently, Force the US to Stop Backing Notorious White Warlords in Haiti
    12 Oct 2022
    ​​​​​​​Haiti's oligarchy of light skinned, "white" families are the rulers of the country and act in collusion with the U.S. to maintain their power and prevent the emergence of a sovereign…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us