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If the only thing that mattered was the fiscal harm, then shoplifting or embezzling or the like should also be a civil matter like wage theft. There's definitely a value judgement involved in the way our penalties are structured.

Victoria in Australia has recently passed laws making wage theft a criminal offence:

https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/wage-theft-legislation-passes...

Interesting. I'll have to read up on the arguments behind this.

I don’t know enough about other countries’ wage theft situation to comment. I would assume countries with larger union representation would experience less wage theft of this kind, but I don’t really know.

I do know that other countries don’t incarcerate anywhere close to as many of its citizens as the US, especially for what amounts to a rounding-error’s worth financial loss due to petty theft (a handful of fighter jets worth).