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,
listen
http://www.againstthegrain.org/files/files/atg/atg_2014.11.12_401ks.mp3
The spectacle of violence against Haitians at the U.S.-Mexico border needs to be seen in light of ongoing U.S. imperialism in Haiti.
U.S. policies have created the conditions in Haiti that have compelled tens of thousands to flee.
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
Schmo Munchkin v. Ida Ida: Hello, Schmo… Munchkin:
DOJ "reforms" are a smoke screen covering up systemic complicity with law enforcement.
