Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, known by fans as “Mr. Wonderful,” gave CNN’s audience a dose of economic reality they desperately needed to hear; that blue states are increasingly becoming uninvestable.
“I don’t put companies here in New York anymore or in Massachusetts or in New Jersey or in California. Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane. The taxes are too high,” O’Leary said,
"New Jersey, what a mess. New York, uninvestable.”
When the CNN panel inquired about why New York was investible, and if it just had to do with tax policy, O’Leary pointed out that it’s much more than that; “The regulatory environment is punitive. Thousands of jobs coming out of that... that’s New York. Uninvestable,” O’Leary said, while referencing a recent case when a global data center project he was part of near Niagara Falls moved to Norway due to the business environment in New York.
O’Leary said last year of that project “I had a project in upstate New York behind the grid in Niagara Falls for electricity – a global data center we were building. Eventually it got so bad with the politicians in the local region and the state policy, we moved it to Norway… and all the jobs. Norway has it now. Thousands of jobs coming out of that!” It certainly says a lot about the regulatory environment in New York when a nation known for having taxes among the highest in the developed world was preferable to do business in.
"Don't shoot the messenger, just telling you the way it is," he told CNN.
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