Why are you defending/waiving away wage theft? Not stealing from people and following the law is the absolute minimum an employer can do. It is not the governments fault when you break the law. Should it be ok for an employee to steal because someone else stole from work? Because society is complex and hard and has rules and laws but can't police everything 24/7?

I've been an employer. I've been a manager. My family owned factories. None of us were forced to steal wages. If you are in that situation you are a zombie business that can't actually afford to function properly.

Here's OPs tone that I simply echoed back but directed at the actual identified largest thieves in our nation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48788134

And they are the largest thieves without even going into abusing 1099. Hiring undocumented workers under the table. And all kinds of other 'acceptable to civil society' society undermining behaviors.