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


  • On African Liberation Day Biden’s Troop Deployment to Somalia Confirms Africa is Not Free
    Black Alliance For Peace
    On African Liberation Day Biden’s Troop Deployment to Somalia Confirms Africa is Not Free
    25 May 2022
    The Black Alliance for Peace marks African Liberation Day with a statement condemning the latest US troop deployment to Somalia.
  • Boots on the ground in Buffalo
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Boots on the ground in Buffalo
    25 May 2022
    Boots on the ground in Buffalo
  • BAR Book Forum: Omedi Ochieng’s “Groundwork for the Practice of the Good Life”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Omedi Ochieng’s “Groundwork for the Practice of the Good Life”
    25 May 2022
    This week’s featured author is Omedi Ochieng. Ochieng is Associate Professor in Black Studies and in the Department of Communication at Denison University. His book is Groundwork for the Practice of…
  • Biden Redeploys Pentagon Troops to Somalia While Humanitarian Crisis Looms
    Abayomi Azikiwe
    Biden Redeploys Pentagon Troops to Somalia While Humanitarian Crisis Looms
    25 May 2022
    Joe Biden's troop redeployment in Somalia is a continuation of a 30-year long US intervention. It comes at a time of severe drought and a humanitarian crisis.
  • The U.S. Gives Us Hell but it’s a Liberated Africa that Can Douse the Flames
    Mark P. Fancher
    The U.S. Gives Us Hell but it’s a Liberated Africa that Can Douse the Flames
    25 May 2022
    African Liberation Day is a reminder that African descended people make progress when joined together in international unity. Internationalism is essential.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us