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


  • DOCUMENT: Resolutions Passed by the Fourth Pan-African Congress, New York City, 1927
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: Resolutions Passed by the Fourth Pan-African Congress, New York City, 1927
    01 Jun 2022
    The Fourth Pan-African Congress in New York in 1927 was the first held in the Americas, and the first organized by women.
  • Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part 5
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part 5
    01 Jun 2022
    Ann Garrison ends her reporting from the Horn of Africa with updates on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the conflict between Ethiopia and the TPLF.
  • Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)
    01 Jun 2022
    Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)
  • “The connections between policing and militaristic assault on the world are endless”: An Interview with Julian Akil Rose
    Roberto Sirvent and Julian Akil Rose
    “The connections between policing and militaristic assault on the world are endless”: An Interview with Julian Akil Rose
    01 Jun 2022
    BAR Book Forum editor Roberto Sirvent and Julian Akil Rose discuss community organizing, Black Queer Feminism, the struggle for police and prison abolition, and an end to militarism.
  • Witnessing and Making History: On Observing the 2022 Presidential Elections in Colombia
    Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
    Witnessing and Making History: On Observing the 2022 Presidential Elections in Colombia
    01 Jun 2022
    "From May 26 to May 31, I was in Cali, Colombia serving as an election observer with an international delegation of mostly Black women. This is a preliminary report."
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us