Watch: Kevin O'Leary Hammered AOC For Killing NY Jobs
In recent news, Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has called out leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for her job-killing policies that have crippled the tax-obsessed state of New York. On the Mar. 3 edition of CNN This Morning, O’Leary spoke about how “uninvestable” states like New York, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey have become due to their punitive taxes and regulations, which have been pushed by figures like AOC.
“She’s great at killing jobs,” O’Leary said of AOC. “She kills jobs by the thousands.” He then pointed to the incident when AOC managed to nix Amazon’s plans to build a headquarters in Queens. “Where did Amazon take their jobs? They took them away from her. She threatened to sue them if they created jobs.”
AOC didn’t take kindly to being called out as a job-killer and took to social media to blast O’Leary. AOC tweeted that if New York is “so ‘uninvestable’, then why is NYC home to some of the most billionaires in the world?”
What AOC failed to mention was the New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli admission to Bloomberg News in December that there’s “‘no doubt there’s been a net migration of taxpayers at the upper end. It should be a concern for everybody.”
The truth of the matter is that AOC and other liberal politicians have been pushing policies that are killing jobs and making it harder for businesses to succeed. The punitive taxes and regulations have caused businesses to uproot and move out of New York, taking their jobs with them.
O’Leary shared his own experience with trying to set up business in New York:
“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.”
It’s clear to see why New York, and other leftist-run states, are uninvestable. Democrats’ policies of higher taxes, oppressive regulations, and job-killing initiatives have hamstrung the states’ ability to create and retain jobs.
This is why it’s important to elect officials who understand the importance of creating an environment that is conducive to investment and job growth. It’s time for a change and for Democrats to stop using their states as a petri dish for their radical, job-killing policies.