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


  • Europe and US Now Policing Black Migrants in Africa
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Europe and US Now Policing Black Migrants in Africa
    15 Mar 2021
    To justify US and European military occupation of much of Africa, migrants seeking jobs in the north of the continent or in Europe “are labeled as criminals and terrorists” when they are “just look
  •  Black Is Back Coalition Partners Praise 19-Point Self-Determination Agenda
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Is Back Coalition Partners Praise 19-Point Self-Determination Agenda
    15 Mar 2021
    At a webinar last week, Jericho Movement chairperson Jihad Abdulmumit said the Black Is Back Coalition’s National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination “covers everything,
  •  Community Control is Best Route to Abolishing Policing As We Know It
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Community Control is Best Route to Abolishing Policing As We Know It
    15 Mar 2021
    Community control of police advocates in the Washington, DC region say their approach is the best -- and most democratic – way to achieve both defunding and total abolition of policing as it exists
  • Freedom Rider: Trump/Biden Foreign Policy
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Trump/Biden Foreign Policy
    10 Mar 2021
    Biden rules like Trump regarding Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Haiti, because the two imperial parties serve the same masters.
  • Anti-Asian Racism Never Stopped Being an Outgrowth of U.S. Imperialism
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Anti-Asian Racism Never Stopped Being an Outgrowth of U.S. Imperialism
    10 Mar 2021
    Scant attention has been placed on the context of anti-Asian racism and its roots in the history of U.S. imperialism. 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us