Feddit.frYSK: Wage theft is the biggest crime by annual losses
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MalReynoldsConspicuously absent are tax avoidance and fraud (especially insider trading), which likely give wage theft a serious run for it’s money (boom boom), and as u/minorkeys says, labour value theft is where the capital comes from.
Yup, tax avoidance seems to be orders of magnitude than anything in this infographic
This State of Tax Justice 2025 report shows that over the six year period for which data is available, US-headquartered multinational corporations cost countries around the world US$495 billion in lost corporate tax – some 29% of the global total of US$1.7 trillion lost to global corporate tax abuse. The United States itself is the biggest loser to global corporate tax abuse, losing $US271 billion to its own multinationals.
YerboutiI would say rich people and business not paying taxes is on par with this.
Labour value theft(profit) is and will always be the bigger crime.
Yeah this reads weird… the wording sounds like “employees stealing from employers”, but the graph references things like “minimum-wage violations”, which implies “employers stealing from employees” (a form of labour value theft)…
Yet overtime violations and rest-break violations could be people not being paid for OT or given mandated breaks, or it could be people claiming OT they didn’t work, or taking longer breaks than agreed upon ?!
In this case I think “Data Is Confusing” may be more accurate than “Data Is Beautiful.”
TiredTiger“Wage theft” is defined as the theft of wages by employers, and it’s actually a crime in several states. “Minimum Wage Violations” would be people being paid less than minimum wage, “Overtime Violations” would be people not being paid overtime, “Rest Break Violations” would be people not receiving breaks, and “Off The Clock Violations” would be people working without getting paid.
Pretty sure claiming hours you didn’t work would be considered some form of fraud, but I don’t see any kind of fraud listed on this graphic.
EDIT: Of course, theft of labor value would dwarf all of this, but capitalists don’t see that as theft.
Ahh! Ok, my bad - I don’t hear it often, so I got them mixed up - the other, that some capitalist opinion-piece writing bags of shit were complaining about a lot over the last few years is referred to as “time theft.” (Took some tricky search-fu to find it)
Now add civil asset forfeiture
Federally, it would be between robbery and auto theft. (~$2.3B)
[off topic?]
Back in the day, then-NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg introduced a wide ranging plan to stop City workers from unfairly collecting overtime. The project, CityTime, was supposed to cost about $65 million. Somehow, the cost swelled to over $1 billion.
The plan was being run by Bloomberg’s daughter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityTime_payroll_scandal#::text=The%20CityTime%20payroll%20scandal%20was%20a%202003%E2%80%932010%20public,New%20York%20CityTime%20electronic%20payroll%20and%20timekeeping%20system.
I bet she bought a new mansion that year…
Link to article?
Not quite an article, and the link in the watermark is wrong, but this is the data source
And they say the US isn’t striving to be green enough. This picture is from 2012, I think it looks much greener in 2026.
The biggest crime? Oh my sweet summer child…
Wages are only a minor inconvenience to corporations. It is just a very small tip of a giant iceberg: tax evasion, created scarcity, inflated prices (including markup upwards of 10,000% on medical supplies), price agreements, unethical marketing strategies, dark internet patterns, and many many other evil corporate strategies.
No article?
I’m not a fan of US-centric posts. What do the statistics look like for other countries?
I’m also not a fan of US-centric,but the problem is usually that it assumes all readers are from the US and know its about the US without ever mentioning the US. This one actually says “in the US” at the top, so its fine by me.
I have no idea, maybe you could research it and make a post for your own country? Be the change you want to see in the world!
TBF lately most of the visuals are USA Vrs rest of the world based on wars started/abuses occurred/corruption level etc. This is light reading in comparison.
But but that’s Free Market Freedum! We can’t punish the Job Creators, because bible or some shit.
Yet you have countless dipshit MAGAts, who’ve struggled desperately for decades, gleefully supporting Trump and his war on Iran, while asserting to you that shoplifting from billion dollar corporationsis one of the greatest threats to America right now.
I’m pretty sure taxes, company profit and land rent are much bigger numbers by many orders of magnitude.
This wage theft narrative normalises capitalism while quibbling over a relatively small amount.
No doubt about that, and you’ll get no arguments from me against that.
Yeah, I can see your point. The reason I present it is because there are lots of narratives in the mainstream press about shoplifting, “organized retail crime”, and how we need to fund the police to detect/prevent/reduce crime, whereas unpaid overtime is pretty much expected, especially in blue collar jobs. It exposes the media and the prevailing mainstream narratives as being biased in favor of the ruling class.
I thought this was about surplus value, not even mentioned.
The ruling class have a loophole - extracting the surplus value of their workforce isn’t a crime, sadly. Not yet, anyways. Inshallah.
Where’s fraud? It seems like the categories chosen are a sampling
Fraud would be counted under Larceny, which is a pretty broad category - robbery is larceny with violence, burglary is larceny with breaking and entering.
But if those are categories under larceny why is larceny its own category?
The omission of fraud as its own category sticks out to me because of how much healthcare companies do medicare fraud. I think I remember hearing trump pardoned some guy who alone committed it in the billions of dollars? If it’s included in larceny on this chart it seems low in that context.