Kevin O'Leary smiling in a black jacket with silver floral embroidery at the 98th Oscars arrivals, Dolby Theatre, Hollywood.
Mike Coppola / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images
News

Kevin O’leary Says Kids Making $70,000 Who Spend $28 on Lunch Are “Stupid.” Bernie Sanders Says Guys Like O’leary “Live In Their Own World.”

By

The advice sounds tidy: skip the $28 lunch, invest the money, retire richer. Kevin O’Leary has been making a version of that pitch for years. Bernie Sanders says the people handing out that advice have no idea what a $70,000 salary actually buys anymore.

O’Leary’s argument, delivered on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast, came down to compound interest: a worker earning $70,000 who drops $28 on lunch is torching money that could have grown for decades. In his telling, small daily habits are the difference between building wealth and staying broke.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an older white man with white hair and glasses, listens thoughtfully with his hand raised to his chin, wearing a blue shirt and striped tie.
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a Capitol Hill news conference on vaccine safety and efficacy alongside doctors and public health experts on September 9, 2025. Photo by Kent Nishimura / Getty Images.

Sanders wasn’t buying the premise. Reacting to the clip on the debut episode of the YouTube show “On Sunday with Jack Cocchiarella,” the Vermont senator said people like O’Leary are “completely separated from the reality that ordinary Americans are experiencing.” His words: “They have no clue. They live in their own world.”

He pushed it further, casting the disconnect as something bigger than lunch budgets: “Many of these guys, I don’t know about O’Leary specifically, many of these guys do not believe in democracy,” Sanders said, before voicing the mindset he’s describing: “I run the world, kid, and you better understand that.”

Bald older man in a black shirt and silver-embroidered black blazer smiling at a red carpet event with a decorative logo backdrop.
At the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on March 15, 2026, Kevin O’Leary walks the arrivals for the 98th Oscars, wearing a black shirt beneath an ornate embroidered jacket. Photo by Mike Coppola / Getty Images.

The clash lands at a moment when younger investors are already drifting from the old playbook O’Leary is defending. In Bank of America Private Bank’s 2026 Study of Wealthy Americans, 67% of Gen Z and millennial investors said stocks and bonds alone no longer cut it — against just 15% of boomers and the Silent Generation who agreed. The gap suggests the retire-richer formula may be losing its audience regardless of what either man thinks.

Thanks for reading Thought Catalog. Join us on Facebook, or keep reading on our website.