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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

We have the same thing happening at the top end. Companies just ignoring paying rent, arbitration fees and deferred prosecution is the biggest scandal, "promise us you wont do it again and we will forget about it". The goal of any larger company now is to get too big to prosecute.

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Wage Theft is the largest form of theft by miles, but we don't see endless news articles writing about how it represents a failure of law and order. Curious.

Wage theft doesn’t create the same kind of fear as someone shoving a gun in your face and taking your property.

I don't know about you, but I'm way more afraid of falling homeless and into that spiral of despair than any possible person with a gun.

> I'm way more afraid of falling homeless and into that spiral of despair than any possible person with a gun.

Said the person who's clearly never had a gun pulled on them.

trauma's no fun. I'm grateful I've never had that happen to me. have you? how was it? how did you process it?

Called the cops, described gunman and weapon, replaced the watch he got. Continued to walk late at night, tried to woolgather less.

Nobody is shoving a gun in people's faces in these stories about retail crime. People are just taking stuff off shelves and not paying for it.

What I find curious is how often comments like these are made without posting a link to any kind of source. I’ll just admit I have no idea what wage theft is, and I’d argue most people don’t know either. Can you enlighten me, or provide a source that explains it? And if you feel so strongly, why not post something to HN about it so we can all discuss?

Wikipedia has a pretty good description, sources, and recent US-based examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

Wage theft is self correcting in the bigger picture. People with better options will go for those options. People who perform better than they are paid will tend to have better opportunities.

Focusing on wage theft also fails to account for all the cheating employees do like slacking during lulls instead of being productive as expected.

Then why hasn't it self corrected?

Why do you assume it hasn't?

Because wage theft remains common.

You're missing the point entirety.

I don't believe that's true.

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