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


  • Can COVID-19 Take Down NATO?
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Can COVID-19 Take Down NATO?
    25 Mar 2020
    The Pentagon insisted on going ahead with provocative NATO war games near Russia’s borders, despite the coronavirus epidemic, but Germany pulled its forces out and closed its roads to troop movemen
  • Chinese Disease?
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Chinese Disease?
    25 Mar 2020
    He didn’t say Chinese debt, did he? He didn’t say Chinese pharmaceuticals, did he? He didn’t say Chinese phone, did he? He didn’t say Chinese computer, did he?
  • Coronavirus, Militarism and the End of an Illusion
    Black Alliance For Peace
    Coronavirus, Militarism and the End of an Illusion
    25 Mar 2020
    People are waking people up to the fact that the US state and government does not belong to them but to a capitalist class that is only looking out for itself.
  • Black Politics, Class Struggle and the Illusion of Centrism
    Russell Rickford
    Black Politics, Class Struggle and the Illusion of Centrism
    25 Mar 2020
    Black Democratic Party operatives seek to camouflage class antagonisms among African Americans and to equate racial progress with the feeble policies of “diversity and inclusion.”
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    25 Mar 2020
    This week the Democratic Party and the failures of US healthcare were on your mind.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us