Mark Skousen Quotes

Every one says: 'Listen, I'd love to reinvest. I'd love to hire people. But I have no idea what this healthcare bill is going to do to my bottom line. I have no idea what this financial reform bill is going to do... I'm not going to step out a limb and do any of those until I know what this government is going to do to me.'

In undertaking the regulation of inter-State commerce, Congress is entering upon a new and untried field.

Heavy-handed regulations hurt the very consumers they're supposed to help.

Overly restrictive regulations not only stifle the private sector; they also ultimately hurt consumers.

Behind every bad law, a deep fear.

Unfortunately, liberals didn't stop with welfare-statism. They also turned to economic regulations, not understanding that such interventions, again, harmed the very people they were supposedly truing to help - the poor and destitute.

When laissez-faire creates instability, the move to a freer market can be something less than pure gain.

We must, we must cut the EPA's legs off. I hate to say that, because it sounds rotten, but they are choking this country to death with legislating through the bureaucracy in Washington.

Every bad thing that happens has a ready-made solution in the form of a new government program, tax or regulation.

Congress is going to start tinkering with the Ten Commandments just as soon as they find someone in Washington who has read them.

There ought to be a law about you coming around.

Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise.

[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.

State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.

The benefits of a tariff are visible. Union workers can see they are "protected". The harm which a tariff does is invisible. It's spread widely. There are people that don't have jobs because of tariffs but they don't know it.

When should we nudge and when should we shove, I think, it's a political judgment. Obviously in some situations we need shoves, we need laws. Fraud is against the law, murder is against the law, drunk-driving is against the law. We don't need just nudges.

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.

Thus, the isolated interference with one or a few prices of consumer goods always bring about effects-and this is important to realize-which are even less satisfactory than the conditions that prevailed before.

In general, presidents and congressmen have very limited power to do good for the economy and awesome power to do bad. The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation, and staying out of our lives.

There is no such thing as a free market.

The Senate has passed a new bill that requires TV stations to lower the volume level on commercials. This is great, a hundred of the most powerful people in the nation have managed to do the same thing my remote does.

In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies ... march. ... Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices -- that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities.

Government price-fixing once started, has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country has every right to be spared.

Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.