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


  • Ujima People's Progress Party Conference
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Ujima People's Progress Party Conference
    15 Apr 2022
    Gus Griffin, a member of Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team and the Membership Committee of the Ujima People’s Progress Party, discusses their upcoming statewide conference taking place in Landover…
  • Eritrea Continues Its Fight for Sovereignty
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Eritrea Continues Its Fight for Sovereignty
    15 Apr 2022
    Elias Amare is an editor and journalist at Horn of Africa TV. US policy towards Eritrea has always been hostile. Recent events have been no different as the US continues to target that nation with…
  • Manufacturing Hate: How Africa was Demonized in Western Media
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Manufacturing Hate: How Africa was Demonized in Western Media
    15 Apr 2022
    Milton Allimadi is publisher of Black Star News, an adjunct professor of history at John Jay College, and an adjunct professor in the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University. He is…
  • Liberal Russophobia and War Propaganda
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Liberal Russophobia and War Propaganda
    13 Apr 2022
    U.S. liberals are the worst perpetrators of Russophobic behavior. They are most likely to follow the dictates of corporate media and the democratic party and proudly take part in discriminatory acts…
  • GLEN FORD: Black Lives Matter Founder Launches Huge Project to Shrink Black Lives, 2019
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    GLEN FORD: Black Lives Matter Founder Launches Huge Project to Shrink Black Lives, 2019
    13 Apr 2022
    Glen Ford reminded us that Black liberation cannot be found over a cheese plate and mimosas in a $6 million southern California mansion.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us