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


  • Roger D. Harris
    Will the US Attack Venezuela?
    15 Oct 2025
    Solidarity activist and analyst Roger Harris takes stock of the rapidly escalating US military threats against Venezuela.
  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio October 10, 2025
    10 Oct 2025
    In this week’s segment, we hear about a graphic novel that presents the history of Black armed resistance in the U.S. But first, we discuss the city of Chicago and how activists and communities are…
  • ICE Protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Chicago Mobilizes Against Trump
    10 Oct 2025
    Frank Chapman is Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. He joins us from Chicago, which Donald Trump has targeted with an onslaught of federal law…
  • Ben Passmore
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance
    10 Oct 2025
    Ben Passmore is the author of the graphic novel: “Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance,” published by Pantheon Books. Ben Passmore is an award-winning political cartoonist who has…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    "Left" Except for Haiti
    08 Oct 2025
    The latest interference from the United Nations ensures that Haiti’s “gang” problem will continue and that its cause, an illegitimate governing structure brought about by the UN, U.S. and their…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us