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


  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Mother Earth Is Angry!
    01 Oct 2025
    "Mother Earth Is Angry!" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • x
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Elias Amare
    Eritrea in the Empire’s Crosshairs: Propaganda and Regime Change Operations
    01 Oct 2025
    Western NGOs and media recently launched coordinated attacks on Eritrea, a longstanding US target for regime change.
  • Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
    Not Your Daddy's COINTELPRO: Obama Brands Assata Shakur "Most Wanted Terrorist"
    01 Oct 2025
    In 2013 Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder declared Assata Shakur a Most Wanted Terrorist, placing a $2 million bounty on her head. The late Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report Managing…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Paris Climate Agreement is the Global Climate “Movement’s” Two State Solution
    01 Oct 2025
    The Paris Climate Agreement is akin to a two-state solution for a planet on the brink, a falsehood giving the ecocide perpetrators cover for their crimes.
  • Charo Mina Rojas
    Until Dignity Becomes Customary: the Determination of Francia Márquez Mina
    01 Oct 2025
    Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez Mina is strengthening diplomatic relations with African countries and their connections with Colombia's African descended communities.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us