'Mr. Wonderful' Kevin O'Leary Whips Out Some Economic Tough Love on CNN Panel

Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Vice President Kamala Harris plans to unveil new economic policies on Wednesday aimed at helping small businesses grow. The nation was treated to Harris' economic "prowess" recently when she proposed a federal ban on price gouging to lower food prices. While investing in small businesses is great, many more businesses are figuring out which states are more profitable than others in which to do business, and more and more, it isn't blue states. This reality was recently shared with a CNN panel, and they were not happy. 

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"Shark Tank's" Kevin O'Leary, a.k.a. "Mr. Wonderful," appeared recently on CNN to talk about the biggest issue facing Americans in November: the economy. O'Leary knows a thing or two about the economy and how it relates to creating a healthy environment to grow and invest in businesses. He whipped out a little tough love on the CNN panel and stated that there are states where he no longer does business because those states are what he called "uninvestable."

"I don't put companies in here New York anymore... or in New Jersey... or in California. Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane, the taxes are too high."

O'Leary went on to say that he is putting businesses in places like North Dakota, which was rated in 2023 and 2024 as the best state for starting a business. He described speaking with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D), where he explained why he had to move businesses out of the state. O'Leary is not a partisan, but he described the time-honored Democrat practice of "punishing people if they're successful, you overtax them, you hit them with a supertax..." We can only guess what a "supertax" would entail. 

Other states on the "uninvestable" list were New Jersey, which he described as "a mess," and New York, also as uninvestable. It was here where one of the panelists decided to wade in and ask why New York was uninvestable. O'Leary laid it out, saying that the problem with starting a project in New York was beyond high taxes, but the regulatory environment was "punitive." He described a project in upstate New York he was involved in that would have brought thousands of jobs to the region, but dealing with not just local and regional politicians but state politicians and policy was so extreme that the entire project was moved to Norway, and the jobs right along with it. 

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The panel then suggested that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) might want to debate O'Leary on his economic assessment of New York. He stated that he would "debate them any time of the day you want." But it was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who he said he would especially love to debate, saying, "She's great at killing jobs. She kills jobs by the thousands." He was referring to the 2019 cancellation of Amazon building a second headquarters in Queens, near AOC's district. The headquarters would have brought at least 25,000 new jobs to the area and roughly $30 million in new revenue. AOC, who holds an economics degree from Boston University, touted the pullout of Amazon as a "defeat" of "corporate greed."

O'Leary said that it might be a hard message to hear, "but someone has to call it out." He also called it "a competition of states." He summed up what will eventually happen to business-unfriendly states that you don't have to be an economist to figure out. That unfriendly environment will "diminish" those states, and California, as he made a throat-slashing motion, he stated, will be "out of business," that "you can't do business there." In California, the slide will be toward just having the super-rich and the super-poor, with no remaining middle class to pick up the tax slack.

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Kevin O'Leary is telling people like Elizabeth Warren why no one wants to invest in their states. But will any of them listen?

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