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


  • Hannah Natanson , Emmanuel Felton
    Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show
    22 May 2024
    A WhatsApp chat started by some wealthy Americans after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reveals their focus on Mayor Eric Adams and their work to shape U.S. opinion of the Gaza war.
  • Rob Grams
    New Caledonia: Kanak Revolt Against French Colonialism
    22 May 2024
    To understand the current uprisings in New Caledonia, one must look back at the history of colonization and violent repression of the islands by France.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe
    African Liberation Day and the Struggle for Freedom in Palestine
    22 May 2024
    There is a close connection between the Pan-Africanist Movement and the current struggle to end the genocide in Gaza
  • BAP Atlanta
    ATL to GAZA: Free Palestine and Stop Cop Cities
    22 May 2024
    The violence unleashed by Zionism and US imperialism can only be combated through mass organized political activity united in a commitment to toppling these forces.
  • Illustration of Jean-Jacques Dessalines
    Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
    How The West Underdeveloped Haiti
    22 May 2024
    What are the roots of Haiti’s prolonged crisis? Haitian-American scholar Jemima Pierre takes us through the history of how the West underdeveloped the country, from French colonial looting and debt…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us