“Should we punish Musk for making the economy greener?”, Kevin O’Leary asks in an interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher”

The investor of American show ‘Shark Tank’ Kevin O’Leary defended Tesla CEO Elon Musk massive fortune of $300 billion by arguing that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO should not be punished for changing human lives by making technology a big part of it in an interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Saturday.

The owner of O’Learu Funds also predicted that the employees who worked from home in pandemic will may not come to firm’s offices and there will be a shift of work from offices to working remotely which will give rise to the demand of employees with digital skills. The Mr.Wonderful also attributed the recent rise in asset prices to aggressive fiscal stimulus.

Here is a list of his best quotes from the interview a bit edited for clarity:

• He said in defense of Elon Musk’s fortune, “You think about what that man’s accomplished and how he’s changed everybody’s lives. Space, what he’s done with electric cars, making the economy greener. Should we punish him for that? Is he a bad guy?”
• He stated while dismissing the idea of how wealthy Elon Musk is, “When he dies we’re taking it all back anyway. Now if you’d like to accelerate that, should we arrest him, shoot him, and take all the money now?”
• He stated while discussing about the impact of government’s stimulus on asset prices during the pandemic, “You print $3.5 trillion, put it in a helicopter and throw it down into the country, you’re darn right the stock market’s gonna go up. So is the watch market, the wine market, the car market. Anything that’s a hard asset has exploded to the upside because money is free.” – discussing the impact of government stimulus on asset prices during the pandemic.
• He argued in favor of the shift of work from office to remote working, “They’re never coming back. They have proven that they can use technology to do their job successfully, creatively, functionally, productively. They want to stay at home, raise their kids, take care of their elderly parents. In fact, if you say to them, ‘You have to come back to the office, that’s our new mandate,’ they’ll say, ‘Nah, I’m just gonna quit and work somewhere else.”
• “Videographers, photographers, and animators used to be considered starving artists; they made nothing pre-pandemic. They are now the most sought-after individuals as the entire economy has gone digital.”
• “These people don’t want to work anymore in a cubicle. In fact, they don’t want to work at all. They want to be contractors. They used to make $30,000, now they make $150,000. A huge transition is occurring.”
• He claimed that there will be a rise in the need of employees with digital skills and said, “I would always tell students that if you’re going to college and getting yourself $100,000 in debt, make sure you’re an engineer, an engineer, or an engineer, and at night take some engineering classes – everything else is worthless. I don’t feel that way anymore.”