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Billionaires Are 'Becoming a Problem for the Economy,' Declares Wall Street Journal Report
"Debate about how much tax billionaires pay is likely to grow as America’s fiscal situation deteriorates and its wealth gap widens."
Feb 18, 2026
A report published Wednesday by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal outlined how billionaires' tax evasion schemes are causing problems for the US economy.
The report, written by London-based columnist Carol Ryan, began by noting how completely the US economy has come to depend on the spending habits of its richest households, whose wealth is primarily tied to the fortunes of the stock market, which "could mean the entire economy pays a steep price in the next market correction."
Ryan then walked through some of the plusses and minuses of the wealth tax being debated in the state of California, which has more billionaires than any state in the nation.
Even while personally finding flaws with the California proposal, Ryan said that plans to extract wealth from the super-rich aren't going away, even if the California tax plan is ultimately defeated.
"Debate about how much tax billionaires pay is likely to grow as America’s fiscal situation deteriorates and its wealth gap widens," Ryan wrote. "Data from the Federal Reserve shows that only the richest 1% of households have grown their share of overall US wealth since 1990."
Ryan also broke down how the very richest Americans have tax evasion options that mere multimillionaires don't have.
"A common strategy is to avoid salaries, which are heavily taxed," she wrote. "Billionaires prefer to be paid in shares, which are subject to capital-gains taxes when sold. But they don’t need to sell to fund their lifestyles. Billionaires use borrowed money for living expenses, pledging their shares or other assets as collateral."
Ryan added that "the interest on the debt is much lower than a capital-gains tax bill would be," and billionaires compound this wealth by passing it off to their children as part of a “buy borrow die” tax avoidance plan.
Boston College law professor Ray Madoff told Ryan that the wealth at the very top has grown so concentrated that even "very well-off Americans with high incomes" are now aligned "much more with the middle class" than in the past.
Ryan's report isn't the only one published by the Journal in recent weeks to warn of dangerous levels of US wealth inequality.
Chief Wall Street Journal economics commentator Greg Ip last week posted data showing that corporate profits' share of gross domestic income is now the highest it has been in more than 40 years, while the share of income paid out in workers' wages is at the lowest.
"Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more," wrote Ip. "The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders, and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains."
Ip also said that this problem could grow worse if artificial intelligence lives up to its creators' hype and starts replacing human workers on a mass scale.
In such a scenario, wrote Ip, the "biggest winners" of the economy would be shareholders who, as Ryan explained in her piece, have ample tools to avoid paying taxes.
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As Companies Plot Price Hikes, GOP Congress Urged to End Trump Tariffs
"Republicans in Congress have the power to end these cost-raising policies, but instead are voting to rubber-stamp them and put more strain on their constituents," said a leader at Unrig Our Economy.
Feb 16, 2026
A national campaign "to fix the rules of our economy to make it work for working people" took aim at Republicans in Congress on Monday in response to reporting that US companies are planning another round of price hikes due to President Donald Trump's tariffs.
"Companies had raised prices last year after tariffs hoisted costs. Yet starting in the fall, many firms held off on increases and sometimes offered discounts to capture holiday shoppers," the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. "The pricing break is over."
"Some companies have pointed a finger at tariffs for their increases, while others, especially small businesses, also blame higher wages and hefty health insurance costs that firms said they can't absorb or share with suppliers," the Journal detailed.
Citing a December survey of 600 entrepreneurs by Vistage Worldwide, the newspaper noted that "more than half of small business leaders said they planned to increase prices in the next three months," and "nearly 70% planned increases of 4% to 10%, while another 10% forecast increases of more than 10%."
In a Monday statement about the reporting, Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal declared that "Americans are once again bracing for higher costs thanks to Republican-backed tariffs. Republicans in Congress have the power to end these cost-raising policies, but instead are voting to rubber-stamp them and put more strain on their constituents."
Last Wednesday, all but six Republicans in the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives opposed a resolution expressing disapproval of Trump's tariffs targeting Canada. Shortly before the vote, the president said on his Truth Social platform, "Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!"
Tal said Monday that "from pushing for the largest cuts to healthcare in history, to backing tariffs that raise the price of everyday goods for Americans, Republicans in Congress have made life less affordable for their constituents at every turn—all while giving billionaires massive tax breaks."
GOP lawmakers stuffed those tax breaks into the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last summer. The budget package also featured massive cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and did not extend tax credits that helped millions buy health insurance on Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges.
Subsequent efforts to continue the ACA subsidies—which lapsed at the end of last year—have also failed. That means millions of Americans now face skyrocketing health insurance premiums alongside rising costs tied to policies that include Trump's tariffs.
Trump often insists that foreign producers pay for his tariffs, but a major study released last month by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, made clear that—in line with decades of economic research—US businesses and consumers are largely paying for the president's taxes on imports.
Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee last month released another report showing that the average American family paid $1,625 in higher costs last year due to tariffs and other Trump policies. In some states—including Alaska, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York—the impact for the typical household exceeded $2,000.
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'Moral and Political Debacle': Right-Wing Media, CEOs Urge Trump to Stop Deadly ICE Crackdown
"The American people didn’t vote for these scenes and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes,” the New York Post editorial board wrote.
Jan 26, 2026
"The Trump administration spin on this simply isn’t believable."
That's what the editorial board of the right-wing Wall Street Journal wrote Sunday calling for a "pause" in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) anti-immigrant blitz following Saturday's killing of 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Petti—who was disarmed before being shot by federal agents in Minneapolis—and top administration officials' claims that the man who helped save US military veterans' lives was a "domestic terrorist."
The Journal's editors called Pretti's killing “the worst incident to date in what is becoming a moral and political debacle” for President Donald Trump and his administration.
The Journal wasn't alone. Other right-wing outlets owned by the Murdoch media empire, including the New York Post, published editorials calling for a suspension of Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants, during which dozens of people have died in ICE custody and federal enforcers have killed two Americans. Even staunchly pro-Trump Fox News challenged administration officials over the shooting.
"It's time to de-escalate in Minneapolis, Mr. President," the Post's editorial board wrote Sunday.
"Not because you’re wrong to enforce immigration law, nor to go after fraudsters who’ve stolen billions in federal funds—but because these enforcement tactics won’t turn the tide, and instead are backfiring," the editors clarified. "Swing voters—Hispanics and independents who turned to you at the last election—see US citizens dying at federal agents’ hands, and recoil in horror."
"The hasty and misleading rhetoric coming out of the administration needs to stop," the Post said. "And while Pretti was horribly misguided, there is no evidence he was a 'terrorist' intent on a 'massacre' of law enforcement."
As they did with Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother and poet who was shot dead by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month, Trump and some of his senior officials accused Pretti of being a "domestic terrorist"—a move in line with the administration's designation of left-wing activism as terrorism.
US Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said that it looked like Pretti—who eyewitnesses said died while trying to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by ICE—“wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller attempted to smear Pretti as an "assassin" who "tried to murder federal agents."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Pretti of "domestic terrorism."
As the Wall Street Journal's editors put it, "Alex Pretti made a mistake, but he wasn’t a ‘domestic terrorist.'"
"Videos of an event aren’t always definitive, but this is how it looks to us," they wrote. "Pretti attempted, foolishly, to assist a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by agents. Multiple agents then tackled Pretti, and he had a phone in one hand as he lay on the ground. An agent discovered a concealed gun on Pretti, and disarmed him. An agent then shot Pretti, and multiple shots followed."
The Post editors concluded, "Mr. President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes, and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes."
Meanwhile, more than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies including Target, Best Buy, UnitedHealth, 3M, and General Mills published an open letter Sunday calling for "an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local, and federal officials to work together to find real solutions."
Gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association have called for a full investigation of Pretti's killing. The NRA pushed back against arguments that Pretti should not have brought a gun—which he was legally carrying—to a protest, calling such assertions "dangerous and wrong."
"Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens," added the NRA, which was criticized for its initial silence following the killing of Philando Castile, a Black man who was legally carrying a gun when he was shot dead by police in front of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter during a 2016 traffic stop in suburban Minneapolis.
Even Republican lawmakers who support Trump have expressed their dismay over Pretti's killing, with Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana calling the incident "incredibly disturbing."
Chris Madel, an attorney who provided legal counsel to Jonathan Ross—the ICE agent who killed Good—was, until Monday, also a Republican candidate for Minnesota governor. However, Madel said that he dropped out of the race and implied that he would quit the GOP because he “cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state."
“Nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so," he said.
I am ending my campaign for Minnesota Governor. I describe why in the below video. Please watch until the end. (It is 10 minutes, 52 seconds.)
Thank you,
Chris pic.twitter.com/2nfyAyTzNZ
— Chris Madel (@CWMadel) January 26, 2026
" United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear," Madel continued. "United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong."
“At the end of the day, I have to look my daughters in the eye and tell them I believe I did what is right," he added. "I am doing that today."
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