Specifically for wages and insurance dues there's this law: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st....
Summary: Up to 5 years in prison.
In Australia we have the same thing in our Corporations Act: trading while insolvent. Penalties are levied against company directors: $200,000 civil penalty, 5 years imprisonment, and directors being made personally liable for compensating creditors (i.e. 'piercing the corporate veil').
If your business fails, that's unfortunate and you have my sympathy. But it does not give you the right to economically damage the businesses and people around you on your way down.
But even that's called "criminal bankrupty", and not "credit theft" or something. Possibly because you can't steal credit - it's either given, or it's not given.
In the same way, work is either performed, or it's not performed. It's not somehow stealthily extracted from you while you're not looking.
In most cases, salaries are paid for work already performed. So, for at least the first cycle of a missed payroll, the non-paid work was stealthily extracted from you.
And, typically, that's when the company starts telling stories about technical payroll glitches, and so on. Arguably more stealth.
But putting aside the legalism, it's just plain wrong.
People just want to rationalize using the word to mean something different from what it actually means, for dramatic effect.
Your correction didn't apply, btw.
Btw, where's your evidence that 'everyone' on HN knows the difference? We are speaking literally here of course, where 'everyone' means literally every single individual who uses this site. Surely you're not just using hyperbole for 'dramatic effect', as you put it?
At any rate it's ok. I think I understood your non-literal meaning (i.e. the vast majority). But good on you for clearing up that whole 'theft' issue; people were getting very confused there...
- I said credit is given
- You said credit is given <and stuff>.
It really is safe to assume that we all have a shared understanding of what "theft" means in the real world.
It's a simple word, and a simple concept that generally applies to physical property that is taken from its rightful owner, without the owner noticing, or at least without coercion being employed in acquiring it.
If taking someone's property involves coercion, then we're talking about robbery, not theft. We all share this understanding too.
Some people want to use the word for dramatic effect when virtue-signalling online, but that doesn't change the shared understanding.
- Physical property
- Taken from the rightful owner
- Taken without the owner noticing / no coercion
So let's say I take your ATM card without you noticing. That's theft right? What if I then go to an ATM and drain your bank account? Given that money was never in your possession (it was just a number in an electronic ledger somewhere, one keeping track of all the loans made and credits owed by the bank [your deposit is credit to the bank, for instance]), then I'm not committing theft, right?
Boy, this literal language stuff sure is tough! But I'd appreciate your clarification, as it seems so very important we only ever use language in a completely literal manner.
It's interesting you bring up 'shared understanding'; you beat me to it. I doubt very much that anyone, except maybe your literal self, thinks employers are paying their workers and then physically stealing the money back when people use the phrase 'wage theft'. In other words, there's a 'shared understanding' of the non-literal meaning of that phrase.
I mean, when someone calls someone else an 'oxygen thief' I don't think anyone else (again, except for maybe you) actually believes someone is running around stealthily taking oxygen molecules that don't belong to them. It's just a funny insult that literally everyone (-1) mutually understands in a non-literal way.
And sorry, I have no idea what 'virtue signalling' is. Is it some kind of secret hand signal?
Apples and oranges. Shoplifting is a particular kind of theft - not paying someone's salary is not.
A shoplifter takes something from a shop. An employer that doesn't pay someone's salary does not take something from the employee - he refrains from giving.
Besides, work is not physical property. Most people on HN would object to pirating movies being called "theft" of intellectual property, but somehow it's alright to use the word when talking about not being paid one's salary.