In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus acknowledges that differences in an individual’s skill and work ethic means they are treated differently:
“[The master] called his [three] servants and entrusted His wealth to them. To one, He gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. (Matthew 25:14-15)
When the master later checked on the three, he found one had produced an additional five portions; the second, two more portions; but the third had done absolutely nothing. He rewarded the three based on what each had individually done. (This is a core practice of the free-market system.)
Jesus then complained: “A system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.’”[1]
Oh wait—those weren’t the words of Jesus; they were the words of AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest member of Congress and an open socialist). Reflective of her socialist beliefs (and rejecting the free-market approach set forth by Jesus), she announced: “I decided that no one on my staff will make less than $52k/year. It’s likely one of the highest entry-level salaries on the Hill.”[2]
But for high-performing staffers, she capped their salaries at $80,000, which is “well below the median pay for Hill chiefs of staff at $154,634….And it’s a fraction of what experienced staffers could make in other jobs in Washington.”[3]
The predictable result of AOC’s policy will be a mediocre staff. She will overpay incompetent employees (the wage she offers will guarantee a long line of inept applicants). Additionally, she will also fail to attract skilled staffers (qualified individuals can make up to twice as much in other offices). Her livable wage argument sounds compassionate at first but will be a disaster in real life.
Incidentally, while AOC insists on “wage fairness” for her employees, she does not believe in it for herself. She currently has an annual salary of $174,000,[4] and is calling for a significant raise in her own paycheck because, as she explains, she is working so much harder than others.[5] (In socialistic systems, the elites nearly never apply to themselves the standard they demand for the rest; they regularly exempt themselves from their insistence on equality for all.)
In Jesus’s parable, there was neither a bottom nor a top wage; each individual was rewarded “according to his own ability.” As Jesus affirmed: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” (Matthew 25:29)
This economic principle articulated by Jesus has proven to be sound across the ages. In fact, almost two millennia later, Thomas Jefferson expressed Jesus’s principle in these words:
“To take from one because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare [give] to others, who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association: the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry [hard work] and the fruits acquired by it.”[6]
Both history and common sense prove that the economic teachings of Jesus are much sounder than those of AOC.
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[1] Shawn Langlois, “Ocasio-Cortez: It’s ‘immoral’ for a system to allow billionaires amid such poverty,” MarketWatch (January 22, 2019), here
[2] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “Twitter Feed, February 22, 2019,” Twitter (accessed April 24, 2019), here
[3] Stephanie Akin, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a ‘living wage’ starts in her office,” Roll Call (February 22, 2019), here
[4] Brad Tuttle, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is paying her entry-level staffers $52,000. Here’s how that compares to the White House,” Money (2019, February 25), here
[5] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “Twitter Feed, March 13, 2019,” Twitter (accessed April 24, 2019), here
