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
  • omnibus

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


  • Jon Jeter
    As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
    18 Jun 2025
    Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing whites turn to violence against their own people.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Only Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East are zionism, U.S./Western Imperialism and Israel’s Nukes
    18 Jun 2025
    The Middle East’s only real weapons of mass destruction are Zionism, U.S. imperialism, and Israel’s nuclear arsenal—a toxic trifecta fueling endless war.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    City Of Angels
    18 Jun 2025
    "City of Angels" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Janvieve Williams Comrie
    U.S. Settler State Violence Claims New Victims
    18 Jun 2025
    From ICE courtroom ambushes to sheriffs' execution threats, America's domestic repression now openly wields the tools it honed in overthrowing foreign governments.
  • Terri Frick
    Unhoused Why? It’s Always About the Land
    18 Jun 2025
    Homelessness isn’t policy failure—it’s policy. From 19th-century British 'clearings' to today’s police sweeps and Blackstone evictions, the playbook stays the same: displace the poor, privatize the…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us