> Wage theft really should be a strict liability crime -- only proof necessary to convict is that it happened, not that it was intended.

It would still take a public prosecutor to care, and the failure to pay as required is already a strict-liability tort. Not sure that enabling discretionary criminal punishment of acts that are neither intentional, reckless, nor even negligent in this domain helps anyone.

It should be and is in terms of civil law.

It isnt and shouldn't be in terms of criminal law.

Someone drops a zero on you paycheck, you can sue them civially simply because it happened.

However, a simple mistake should not be a felony when there is already a path to redress accidental damages.

A good solution would be a flat tax plus a prebate. Tax all income at 15% regardless of the source, with no tax breaks or exceptions. The first $50k or so is tax free, and that could be handled as a prebate where everyone gets paid (taxRate * floor) by the govt[0]. This would be much more progressive than the current system and vastly simpler to implement and enforce.

Looking at the current capital gains rate is actually too rosy, since there are so many loopholes and exceptions that wealthy people can use to bring the rate down. The actual effective tax rate billionaires in the US pay is below 10%.

I doubt something like this will ever happen given how many selfish interests would fight against it. It sure would be great though if middle class workers didn't pay a higher tax rate than millionaires.

[0] I'm throwing out round numbers but have seen research that backs up figures in this ballpark.

The higher rent you'd pay if you chose to live closer to where you work so that you wouldn't have to drive should also be tax deductible I guess.

Ya let's subsidize people making 50 mile single occupancy vehicle commutes in an F150 instead of one closer and a more efficient vehicle. /s

Fair enough. It's fully deductible when used to offset capital gains as far as I know.

To offset regular income, it's only $3000 a year but losses can be carried forward (though it stays at the dollar value, no inflation is taken into account).

So often largely deductible with some caveats.

It still seems asinine that bad investments are essentially tax subsidized, but whatever.

I believe that the typical remedy in both hypotheticals would be civil court -> breach of contract (written or implied) -> place a lien.

>You're not exactly refuting them, just pointing out that there are other forms of effective theft not considered criminal.

Correct. The point was to raise the question, if that, why not also this?

I think not caring about living in a wealthy country is a perfectly fine value judgement to make for yourself, but as someone with just a modest amount of experience living in poor countries, I highly value wealth.

Maybe my value system that blames wealth is misappropriating the value to wealth when really it's things that correlate with wealth? That's possible of course, but with such consistent correlation I have to imagine it's hard to separate wealth from the society that I most prefer living in.

Happy to be wrong, as equity is a lot more palatable emotionally.

Surely you don't think slavery is an attempt at striking a balance?

I used to work 10h shifts in a warehouse unloading trucks. Managers would talk about time theft like slow walking to the bathroom and taking lots of time in there, recent walk to the water fountain or just too much talking with the other workers. From their POV, the hours we spent in the warehouse must be used to unload trucks, store the goods and load trucks. Any time outside the allowed breaks not spent doing that is stolen from them, because they own it by paying the worker a salary. There was workers also complaining about time theft if one annoying person was working less hard than them. Sometimes, out of boredom, I would push myself to unload a truck as quickly as possible. Most of the time, I would work at a comfortable pace. Often, the goods in the truck were tricky to unload an in a team of 2 people, 1 would be ilde while the other with the right equipment deals with the problem. In this case, managers would say the idle person should "find something to do". It usually was taking a broom and stand with it, occasionally swooping it across the floor. Some people worked fast. Some worked slow. The pay was a flat yearly increase until you reached a cap.

Today I'm a SWE, writing this comment while working from home. I often get praises by my manager for my work. I plan to clean my apartment this afternoon and maybe do some groceries. Never heard anything about time theft at my current workplace.

Unfortunately, managers can see how many boxes are left in a truck and how many were unloaded, they can't really see how many more line of codes are needed to finish a feature or how much thinking about the problem is required to find a solution.

>Civil forfeiture is not theft (although it certainly feels like it to victims, and there are similarities between the two concepts).

How do you figure?

The way I see it, civil forfeiture IS theft. Taking something that belongs to someone else without their consent is theft and that seems to be precisely what civil forfeiture consists of. Just because a court has labelled it differently if someone in a blue hat does it does not make it suddenly not theft. It is simply court-sanctioned theft.