Shark Tank investor and entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary Has become yet another successful individual in the world of business to voice his support for more stimulus checks.
“I’m not worried about business in America, I’m worried about people in America,” O’Leary told Yahoo Finance Live.
“I’d much rather have a stimulus package that gives individual checks or extends unemployment benefits for the next 14 months. The idea that the government can pick winners and losers in business has clearly been demonstrated to be false.”
It’s interesting when prominent individuals in the business world, such as Mark Cuban, come out in support of more government aid.
It makes me wonder how much influence these type of players have on lawmakers.
They’ve proven themselves to be savvy in the business world and that requires a certain level of financial aptitude that you would think would make them worth listening to.
On the other hand, they are also in-part entertainers which tends to make their advice a little bit suspect because you have to wonder if they are delivering messages to the media that they know will get some buzz, clicks, etc.
But he spoke to a lot of facts including the fraud and waste that came along with the Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan money.
We heard countless reports of fraudulent activity and heard about a lot of large businesses taking PPP money who didn’t need it or could have easily obtain funds from alternative methods.
The shark tank investor also shared his opinion on bailing out industries like the airlines.
“Why do I want to bail out the shareholders of an airline when really it should go bankrupt?” O’Leary asked.
“The middle name of airlines is bankruptcy. They do it well, every seven to 10 years. Let them do it again, to downsize because I don’t need them, the S&P doesn’t need them. We don’t need to fly everywhere anymore. We can do it on a Zoom call. I want to take care of the flight attendants and the people that used to work at those airlines, but that’s just one sector of the economy.”
“Do I want to buy into a movie theater chain? No, it’s going to zero, but that’s OK. They’re the buggy whips,” O’Leary said.
“Those are the old economy. We have a new digital economy coming that’s going to be fantastic and that’s why the market is hitting new highs. Winners, losers — that’s capitalism, but people we got to care about.”
His point about the economic transition to digital platforms is well taken. Coronavirus has certainly accelerated the transition to doing things over digital platforms.
Many businesses have realized that they may not need to invest as much in business travel and can do things remotely while being just as productive.
However, I still think there are a lot of dealings that are much better off not taking place over a Zoom conference call.
I think there were still be a longing for face-to-face communications within certain industries and with respect to certain types of transactions.
Overall, it’s great to see more support for stimulus checks within the business community.
While I’m not sure how influential these opinions are on lawmakers, I do think that they express how millions of Americans feel with respect to receiving more relief from the government.
And hopefully — at the very least — there is a lot of weight in that fact.
Related
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McConnell says “compromise is within reach”
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
