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


  • UN soldiers in Haiti
    Leandro Melito , Ana Paula Rocha
    'Haiti should be compensated for the destruction caused by the UN military mission,' says historian
    20 Mar 2024
    Historian said to Brasil de Fato that armed groups are the heirs to the repression of US-backed dictatorships
  • Gov. Wes Moore
    Black Alliance for Peace Baltimore , Ujima People’s Progress Party
    BAP- Baltimore and Ujima People's Progress Party Denounce Maryland’s Unjust Juvenile Justice Bill
    20 Mar 2024
    Despite the messaging from politicians, the new Maryland "Juvenile Justice" bill is another attack on African (Black) youth and, by extension, the whole of the African masses.
  • Jamiles Lartey
    These States Are Once Again Embracing ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Laws
    19 Mar 2024
    Louisiana is one of several states passing punitive measures in response to fears stoked by orchestrated crime panics.
  • Highway flooding
    Adam Mahoney
    How Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Created a ‘Climate Time Bomb’ in Black Neighborhoods
    19 Mar 2024
    Half of the projects funded through the law have been allocated to expanding highways.
  • SNCC Newsletter
    Abayomi Azikiwe
    Pan-Africanism and Palestine Solidarity, Then and Now (Part I)
    19 Mar 2024
    From the era of Malcolm X to the present, progressive forces have supported the Palestinian and Arab struggles against Zionism and imperialism.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us