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


  • Predatory capitalism has driven down wages and created a dystopia for workers.
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: How the Billionaires Rule
    08 Jul 2021
    Predatory Capitalism Has Driven Down Wages and Created a Dystopia for Workers.
  •  Critical Race Theory Debacle Signals the Collapse of the American Empire
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Critical Race Theory Debacle Signals the Collapse of the American Empire
    08 Jul 2021
    Whatever the strengths and limitations of Critical Race Theory, the debate over its usefulness to establishment circles is indicative of the American Empire’s rapid decline
  • .MANIFESTO: International African Service Bureau’s Manifesto Against War, 1938
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: International African Service Bureau’s Manifesto Against War, 1938
    08 Jul 2021
    German Nazis, Italian Fascists, British, French, Belgian democracies – all are the same, imperialist exploiters .
  • Legal scholar Francis A. Boyle told Ann Garrison that a “Responsibility-to-Protect” intervention in Ethiopia would be illegal and catastrophic.
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Ethiopian Conflict and International Law
    08 Jul 2021
    Legal scholar Francis A. Boyle told Ann Garrison that a “Responsibility-to-Protect” intervention in Ethiopia would be illegal and catastrophic.
  • A known known…
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    A known known…
    08 Jul 2021
    “…there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns—things we do not know we know…” -- an infamous War Criminal
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us