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


  • 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.
  • Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia
    13 Apr 2022
    BAR Contributing Editor Ann Garrison reports from Ethiopia.
  • Who Will Hold the US/EU/NATO Accountable For Its Many War Crimes?
    Jacqueline Luqman
    Who Will Hold the US/EU/NATO Accountable For Its Many War Crimes?
    13 Apr 2022
    U.S. presidents and their NATO counterparts have committed war crimes all over the world. But they exempt themselves from prosecution, and use orporate media to act as their personal advocates.…
  • Francia Márquez Mina: the Triumph of a Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Progress
    Charo Mina Rojas
    Francia Márquez Mina: the Triumph of a Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Progress
    13 Apr 2022
    Francia Márquez Mina: the Triumph of a Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Progress
  • “Voting and the Black Left”: An Interview with Kamau Franklin
    Kamau Franklin and Roberto Sirvent
    “Voting and the Black Left”: An Interview with Kamau Franklin
    12 Apr 2022
    Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders, speaks with BAR Book Forum Editor Roberto Sirvent about the limitations of electoral politics for the left.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us