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


  • Crazy Like a Woodfox
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Crazy Like a Woodfox
    10 Aug 2022
    Crazy as a Woodfox...
  • US Threatens Ethiopia and Eritrea with “Genocide Designation”
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    US Threatens Ethiopia and Eritrea with “Genocide Designation”
    10 Aug 2022
    Ann Garrison was invited to address the annual Eritrean Festival, which was held in Dallas. These are her remarks.
  • We Don't Need No Stinkin' Harvard: Why the Crew, and not the Captain, Will Save America
    Jon Jeter
    We Don't Need No Stinkin' Harvard: Why the Crew, and not the Captain, Will Save America
    10 Aug 2022
    The elites who control international finance are the best educated people in the world. They are also the most dangerous and have inflicted the most harm.
  • Black August Builds on Our Black Radical Traditions
    Charles Brooks
    Black August Builds on Our Black Radical Traditions
    10 Aug 2022
    Black August is the commemoration of actions carried out by revolutionaries ranging from Nat Turner to George Jackson. It is a month to "study, fast, train, and fight" to build the Black radical…
  • BAR Book Forum: Maboula Soumahoro’s “Black is the Journey, Africana the Name”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Maboula Soumahoro’s “Black is the Journey, Africana the Name”
    10 Aug 2022
    This week’s featured author is Maboula Soumahoro. Soumahoro is Associate Professor in the English department of the University of Tours. Her book is Black is the Journey, Africana the Name.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us