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


  • The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition
    Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
    The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition
    12 May 2021
    In the past year or two, the proposition of defunding or abolishing police and prisons has travelled from incarcerated-activist networks into mainstream conversations.
  • We Must Break the Duopoly Or Biden Will Deliver Something Much Worse Than Trump
    The Peoples Party
    We Must Break the Duopoly Or Biden Will Deliver Something Much Worse Than Trump
    12 May 2021
    Biden promises popular progressive policies, then quietly reneges while the corporate press turns a blind eye and falls silent.
  • If Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case Is a ‘Non-Issue,’ Why Have Media Gone to Such Lengths to Silence Him?
    Janine Jackson 
    If Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case Is a ‘Non-Issue,’ Why Have Media Gone to Such Lengths to Silence Him?
    12 May 2021
    The corporate media is second only to the police in spreading falsehoods about the nation’s best known political prisoner.
  • Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror 1817-2020
    Joshua Moufawad-Paul
    Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror 1817-2020
    12 May 2021
    “Disease poetics” has been part of global capitalism since its emergence.
  • A Curious Tale of an Iceberg with a Hacked Tip
    Dr. Kweli Nzito
    A Curious Tale of an Iceberg with a Hacked Tip
    12 May 2021
    Practitioners of the dark art of bigotry find a perfect camouflage behind impenetrable walls of denial to mask their wicked ways.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us