The Wall Street Journal Is Mad That Americans Got Rich Legally. Here Is Why That Should Terrify You.

The Wall Street Journal Has Gone Full Populist Outrage Machine

I grew up reading the Wall Street Journal. It wasn’t perfect, but it at least pretended to understand how capital markets work. This week, that pretense is officially dead.

The Journal published a front-page piece, a lengthy, extensively researched piece, outraged that Americans used IRAs and retirement accounts to accumulate serious wealth. The target of their rage is a man named Gregory Bizuki, 61 years old, who bought early stakes in startups when the shares were cheap. One of those bets turned into a roughly 68 million dollar IRA balance. Maybe more. The authors speculate breathlessly about how much he might actually have.

Here is my question for the Wall Street Journal. What exactly did he do wrong?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He made a smart investment decision inside a legal account structure. He disclosed everything he was required to disclose. And now he’s the villain in a front-page story.

The Outrage Is the Story

Let me walk you through what the Journal conveniently left out of their hit piece.

• Traditional IRA holders get taxed on the way out. That 68 million dollar balance? The government is going to take a substantial cut when distributions are made. This isn’t tax evasion. It’s tax deferral, which is literally the entire point of the account.
• Early stage startup investing is brutally risky. For every Gregory Bizuki, there are dozens of investors who put money into startups that went to zero. The Journal didn’t write those stories.
• The companies these people funded employ real workers. Did the authors bother to count the jobs created by the startups that early investors like Bizuki backed? Of course not. That doesn’t generate clicks.
• More than 1,000 people had IRA balances of at least 25 million dollars in 2024. The Journal frames this as a scandal. I frame it as proof that the system can work when people take intelligent risks.

Why This Media Narrative Is Dangerous for You

Here is where this stops being about Gregory Bizuki and starts being about you.

When media outlets run outrage pieces about wealthy people using legal financial tools, the political pressure that follows almost always results in the same outcome. They restrict or eliminate the tools that regular investors could use too.

Think about that. The Roth IRA, the self-directed IRA, the ability to hold non-traditional assets inside retirement accounts, these are tools available to anyone who takes the time to understand them. Every time a journalist frames legal wealth-building as a loophole exploit, they give politicians cover to close off options for everybody.

The average American family has about 268,000 dollars in retirement accounts. The people profiled in this article got to 25 million and beyond by taking early-stage risks that paid off. Most people don’t have access to those specific deals. That is a legitimate policy conversation.

But the answer is not to punish people who made good decisions. And it is definitely not to let a newspaper that employs young writers who probably couldn’t explain the difference between a traditional and a Roth IRA set the terms of that debate.

What You Should Actually Do

Stop letting media outrage shape how you think about building wealth. Focus on what you can control.

• Max out your retirement account contributions every single year.
• Understand what your money is actually invested in and what the fees are.
• Know the difference between tax deferral and tax avoidance so you can stop being manipulated by people who blur that line intentionally.
• Ignore the narrative that successful investors are villains. Learn from what they did right.

The Wall Street Journal used to print news. Now it prints resentment. Don’t let their editorial agenda become your financial strategy.