Conspicuously absent are tax avoidance and fraud (especially insider trading), which likely give wage theft a serious run for it's money (boom boom), and as u/minorkeys says, labour value theft is where the capital comes from.
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I would say rich people and business not paying taxes is on par with this.
Now add civil asset forfeiture
[off topic?]
Back in the day, then-NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg introduced a wide ranging plan to stop City workers from unfairly collecting overtime. The project, CityTime, was supposed to cost about $65 million. Somehow, the cost swelled to over $1 billion.
The plan was being run by Bloomberg's daughter.
Link to article?
And they say the US isn't striving to be green enough. This picture is from 2012, I think it looks much greener in 2026.
But but that's Free Market Freedum! We can't punish the Job Creators, because bible or some shit.
Yet you have countless dipshit MAGAts, who've struggled desperately for decades, gleefully supporting Trump and his war on Iran, while asserting to you that shoplifting from billion dollar corporationsis one of the greatest threats to America right now.
I thought this was about surplus value, not even mentioned.
I'm pretty sure taxes, company profit and land rent are much bigger numbers by many orders of magnitude.
This wage theft narrative normalises capitalism while quibbling over a relatively small amount.
I’m pretty sure taxes, company profit and land rent are much bigger numbers by many orders of magnitude.
No doubt about that, and you'll get no arguments from me against that.
This wage theft narrative normalises capitalism while quibbling over a relatively small amount.
Yeah, I can see your point. The reason I present it is because there are lots of narratives in the mainstream press about shoplifting, "organized retail crime", and how we need to fund the police to detect/prevent/reduce crime, whereas unpaid overtime is pretty much expected, especially in blue collar jobs. It exposes the media and the prevailing mainstream narratives as being biased in favor of the ruling class.
Robbing the poorest schmucks out there is a crime and needs to be punished for the first time in 26 years.
I think you misunderstood my comment.
I'm suggesting to do away with the whole system that enables and encourages crimes like wage theft rather than focusing on individual symptoms of the system.
Where's fraud? It seems like the categories chosen are a sampling
Fraud would be counted under Larceny, which is a pretty broad category - robbery is larceny with violence, burglary is larceny with breaking and entering.
But if those are categories under larceny why is larceny its own category?
The omission of fraud as its own category sticks out to me because of how much healthcare companies do medicare fraud. I think I remember hearing trump pardoned some guy who alone committed it in the billions of dollars? If it's included in larceny on this chart it seems low in that context.
Yeah this reads weird... the wording sounds like "employees stealing from employers", but the graph references things like "minimum-wage violations", which implies "employers stealing from employees" (a form of labour value theft)...
Yet overtime violations and rest-break violations could be people not being paid for OT or given mandated breaks, or it could be people claiming OT they didn't work, or taking longer breaks than agreed upon ?!
In this case I think "Data Is Confusing" may be more accurate than "Data Is Beautiful."
"Wage theft" is defined as the theft of wages by employers, and it's actually a crime in several states. "Minimum Wage Violations" would be people being paid less than minimum wage, "Overtime Violations" would be people not being paid overtime, "Rest Break Violations" would be people not receiving breaks, and "Off The Clock Violations" would be people working without getting paid.
Pretty sure claiming hours you didn't work would be considered some form of fraud, but I don't see any kind of fraud listed on this graphic.
EDIT: Of course, theft of labor value would dwarf all of this, but capitalists don't see that as theft.
Businesses have put significant amounts of money into shrinking the other 'theft' categories. They put nothing into protecting the worker because it's worth it to them to rip us off, and the fines are minimal if caught.
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