When Getting Rich Becomes a Crime in the Media

I want to talk about something that genuinely irritated me this week, and that takes some doing. The Wall Street Journal, a publication I grew up reading and respecting, ran a front-page piece attacking Americans who used their IRAs and retirement accounts to accumulate serious wealth. The authors, Ann Terraguson and Theo Francis, spent an enormous amount of ink being outraged that people made smart investment decisions, didn’t break any laws, and came out ahead.

That’s it. That’s the scandal.

The piece focused on individuals like Gregory Bizuki, a 61-year-old who bought stakes in promising startups when shares were worth very little. One of those bets paid off in a massive way, and now his IRA balance sits at roughly 68 million dollars, possibly more. The Journal even speculates about how much he actually has, as if the speculation itself is supposed to generate outrage.

I have a word for what Gregory Bizuki did. It’s called investing.

What the Journal Got Wrong

The article makes a few factual points that are worth addressing directly.

• IRAs were created for working Americans. True. But nothing in the law says the accounts can only grow to a certain size. The tax incentives exist to encourage saving and investment. They worked exactly as intended.
• More than 1,000 individuals had IRA balances of at least 25 million dollars in 2024. What the article conveniently glosses over is that traditional IRA holders will be taxed on every dollar that comes out. The government is going to collect on that money. This isn’t tax evasion, it’s tax deferral.
• About 200 Americans had balances of 100 million or more. Again, did those people know their startup investment was going to explode in value when they made it? Nobody has a crystal ball. They took a risk. It worked out.

The article also notes that Bizuki was an early insider investor who had to disclose stock sales from his IRA, as if disclosure itself is evidence of wrongdoing. Then they go further and speculate that if he had moved proceeds into an S&P 500 fund after selling, he could have made even more. So now we’re angry at him for not making enough money?

The Real Problem with This Kind of Journalism

Here is what the Wall Street Journal failed to ask in that entire lengthy piece.

• How many people did the companies these investors funded actually employ?
• What products or services came out of those startups that benefited consumers?
• What percentage of early-stage startup investments fail completely, wiping out everything the investor put in?
• What did it take, in terms of risk, research, and patience, to make these investments in the first place?

Those questions don’t generate outrage clicks. So they didn’t ask them.

This is the fundamental problem with a certain strain of financial journalism right now. Reporters see the outcome, the 68 million dollar IRA balance, and they work backwards to construct a grievance. They don’t see the risk taken, the years of uncertainty, or the jobs and value created along the way.

What This Means for Everyday Investors

Here is the practical takeaway for you. The average American family has about 268,000 dollars in individual retirement accounts. The people highlighted in this article got to their balances through early-stage private investments that most people don’t have access to. That part is a legitimate conversation worth having.

But the solution isn’t to punish people who built wealth inside legal account structures. The solution is to make sure you are maximizing every legal tool available to you.

• Contribute the maximum allowable amount to your IRA or 401k every year.
• Understand the difference between a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA and which one makes more sense for your situation.
• Do not let media narratives about wealthy people discourage you from using the same legal frameworks to build your own financial security.

The Wall Street Journal used to be a publication that celebrated intelligent capital allocation. I don’t know what it is now. But I know that attacking Americans for making good decisions with legal investment accounts isn’t journalism. It’s envy dressed up in a business section byline.