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


  • Amazon Launches Anti-Union Website to Derail Alabama Union Drive
    Lauren Kaori Gurley
    Amazon Launches Anti-Union Website to Derail Alabama Union Drive
    27 Jan 2021
    The drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama marks one of the few times in the company's history that workers will have the opportunity to vote in a union election.
  • France Vows 'Symbolic Actions' but No Apologies for Colonization of Algeria
    Adlène Meddi 
    France Vows 'Symbolic Actions' but No Apologies for Colonization of Algeria
    27 Jan 2021
    Between 500,000 and 1.5 million Algerians died in the war for independence, but the French don’t like to talk about it. 
  • Still Can’t Breathe
    Topher Sanders and Lucas Waldron
    Still Can’t Breathe
    27 Jan 2021
    NYPD officers continue to use chokeholds on civilians without any meaningful punishment.
  • Encoding Anti-Blackness: Castration in the Digital Age
    Khalil Martin
    Encoding Anti-Blackness: Castration in the Digital Age
    27 Jan 2021
    El Negro de WhatsApp outgrew the category of prank to become “the biggest meme produced by social media culture in our country.”
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 25, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 25, 2021
    26 Jan 2021
    Biden Will Resume “Humanitarian” Wars
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us