Andrew Scheer Quotes

There is no such thing as a free market.

It is time that we dispensed with the myth that the market is a force of nature that should not be meddled with. Markets are social creations that can be, and have been, modified for social purposes.

When the government gets involved in pricing, I don't think it's the right way to look at a business.

Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with "big government" when it served their needs.

I think almost every economist would agree that government gets itself in trouble when it tries to interfere with voluntary behavior.

All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.

The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.

I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.

I do not believe that the government is in any position to say exactly how every single business and every single activity shall reach those performances.

Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.

Markets are smart and governments are dumb.

Less Government in Business and More Business in Government

Deregulation played virtually no role

When everything is going well, the role of the state in the economy should be limited. When we are in a crisis, it's different.

Subsidies should never be a permanent feature of any market. They should be introduced only to address market failure and they should be withdrawn gradually as those distortions in the market are addressed.

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.

Most companies want free enterprise in general because that produces better goods and services and makes people's lives better, but they don't want it in their business. They want protection from competition, they want subsidies, they want the government to pick winners and losers, and they want to be picked as winners, and that's what we're opposing, and that's what drives my whole efforts in policy, and in the political arena.

The minute you hear subsidies, I don't care what, if it's health care, buying cars, the minute you hear subsidies, you have to understand, whatever's going on here, it isn't market forces.

All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.

Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric.

All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which - from the point of view of their authors and advocates valuations - is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.

Whatever the economy needs to maintain itself, the government will do it.

It is impossible to objectively define how free a market is. This is a political definition. Government is always involved, and those free marketers are as politically motivated as anyone.

It should not be the government running the economy.