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


  • Reality Police Erase Lesbians, Covid-skeptics and Democracy
    Riva Enteen
    Reality Police Erase Lesbians, Covid-skeptics and Democracy
    15 Apr 2021
    Corporate reality police have stablished themselves as the authorities on what constitutes “information” or “disinformation.”
  • The Hypocrisy of “American Democracy”
    Wilmer J. Leon III
    The Hypocrisy of “American Democracy”
    15 Apr 2021
    The US is the anti-democratic force undermining the will of Venezuelans as the US steals their resources and money.
  • The US Dollar’s Hegemony is Looking Fragile 
    Kenneth Rogoff
    The US Dollar’s Hegemony is Looking Fragile 
    15 Apr 2021
    French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously the dollar’s special status called America’s “exorbitant privilege” – which it might be in the process of losing
  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 12, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 12, 2021
    13 Apr 2021
    Black Urban Crises and Push-Out “Engineered”
  •  Biden is Mass Deporter of Haitians and Other Blacks
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Biden is Mass Deporter of Haitians and Other Blacks
    13 Apr 2021
    Biden is Mass Deporter of Haitians and Other Blacks
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us