Big Bird spitting facts like always.
“Profit is wage theft.”
FTFY
This would be very deep to a 12 year old.
That’s not correct, not even a little. How would a company stay afloat without reinvesting profits into themselves. At the very least, they have to keep their equipment working.
Or growth? Does every company need to stagnate soon as they are developed and never grow or change?
I was under the impression that investing in your employees counts as investing in your business.
If people do their jobs so well that a company is raking in profits they deserve a raise.
That’s how the job I work at functions. It’s smallish company, but we get more raises for being competent than our larger, more established competitors give… so I’ll be staying at my current place of employment since they treat us like people.
If a company spends money on itself, that money isn’t profit. Profit is the money left over which the business has no better use for (usually decided as being excess by people who will share in the profit when it is distributed)
Profit is wage theft? How does that make any sense, or help anyone?
Extortionate profits is exploitation.
But profit per se is a person - or the company owners - receiving back some part of the value they created (helped create), on top of the expense put in.
Employees receive profit for their labour as salary; owners receive profit for their investment as ‘company profit’. The problem is exploit their control and position to shift more of the profit to themselves, exploiting the labour of those doing most of the work.
But calling profit wage theft means investors and entrepreneurs should get exactly zero for their investment and work getting things started: and that seems to me a nonsense take that helps nobody - unless you rename profit as ’ investor salary’.
Companies making record profits, which don’t go proportionally to all the members/labourers therein, is a wrong. And I agree with other commenters that it needs a different name.
Wage theft is a different issue that (as I understand it) is massively under-addressed but legally recognised in America/UK/etc, of robbing employees of their wages as per the agreement/contract. This crime needs attacking, and expanding the name to include things that are not legally criminal, makes it harder to tackle this one - or you need a new name for this specifically.*
To address this other kind of wage theft, where employees are robbed, legally, of their appropriate/fair share of the resulting value**, you need a separate framework of legality of fair profit sharing, and illegality of the converse.***
* Incidentally, this is a concern I have about ‘rape’ as non-consent. (And maybe sometimes a parallel concern about some uses of ‘terrorism’.) Should the couple who go into a room for sexy times, get naked, then one decides maybe not tonight, but the other emotionally presses them into it - should that be treated as severely as the man who accosts a woman in the alley at night and forcefully copulates with her? Perhaps? Should the man who forcefully copulates be treated as lax as the one who didn’t take no for an answer after they were both naked in the bedroom? …No. I hope people who actually deal with these things have ways to handle them properly, but it’s seemed to me like the definition gets expanded to make a point, “these things are also bad and you should hate them just as much!” But in the process loses the force of the worse, more specific crime.
(Sorry, long, unrelated tangent.)
** Okay, so I’m calling it ‘robbed’ now. I guess that means I’ve kind of cone round to agreeing more than I intended to.
*** And that’s your point, isn’t it! Well, I thought I disagreed with you, then it seems I’ve talked myself into something at least similar. I’ll let my long and boring comment stand anyway. It’s not 100% useless ;-)
I know you’re distinguishing between wage theft vs robbery, but especially since we are in a solarpunk community, and that has some ties to anarchism, is there really much point in distinguishing? Profit is just an owner taking for themselves what is due to the workers who produce the value, essentially stealing it. You could argue that, well the owner created the company with their investment and therefore incurred risk, but at the end of the day the only risk they incurred would result in them having to become a worker, themselves.
That read was an interesting journey indeed. ^^
I kinda agree with your early-on point. Wage theft has a legal definition, and profiteerig doesn’t fit that. Sometimes you need to flow with the joke, I guess.
For a real solution, I wouldn’t just tell investors or whatever that they can’t make a profit and call it a day, but rather change the entire structure of ownership so that there is nobody left who could make a profit. The people filling the (useful) roles that were formerly filled by investors, CEOs, etc. would then get just another wage/salary. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before. 🤔
You should check out Ursula K Leguin’s sci-fi novel The Dispossessed. It explores a society that has no concept of ownership at all, and the good and bad that comes with that. It’s really really good.
But the whole idea that profit/private property is inherently theft is a major tenant of Marxist theory as far as I understand it, so you saying
I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before.
Is funny because people have been trying to think of solutions for the past ~150 years haha
Edit: behold my inability to sense irony lmaoo
If I make a low-ball offer on a product, and the seller just wants it gone so he accepts, is that theft?
I was pleasantly surprised at the quote I got to have my basement drywall finished and gladly hired the guy and paid him. Was that theft?
Theft has a certain meaning to it. Don’t make the English language more stupid than it already is.
Profit is the excess resources generated when combining capital and labor. Capitalism predominately sends the profit to the holders of capital, and socialism sends the profit predominately to labor.
Profit is not wage theft. Sending that profit to investors rather than workers is.
Edit: as a matter of accounting, profit may be calculated after the workers get their checks. That’s simply an accounting thing and doesn’t really matter to a broader understanding of where the money goes.
That’s literally not the definition.
https://wagetheftisacrime.com/
Don’t dilute the definition of the crime with nonsense.
Boss asks everyone to come in unpaid for a mandatory meeting? That’s wage theft.
They lock you in the store when you’re off the clock to “clean up the store”? That’s wage theft.
Stolen tips, no overtime pay for overtime work, altering timecard punches? All wage theft.
Making too much profit and not passing it to employees may be highly unethical, but it’s not legally wage theft.
It’s not diluting the definition, it’s expanding the definition.
“Legally” just means words written on paper, words that can be changed with legislation.
Don’t get this twisted, the law isn’t some unchanging monolith just because modern governance has been at a standstill when it comes to legislation. There’s “legal” ways to expand the definition until what Big Bird is saying is the legal definition.
I would argue expanding the definition is important, because people need to see spending millions on stock buybacks while cutting wages and cutting jobs to all help boost the stock as the theft of value that it is.
Further, language evolves and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who refuse to accept that the definition of words can grow and change. So spare me the pearl clutching over the “proper, legal definition.” This is solarpunk memes, not boringdystopia memes.
The actual currently defined wage theft is already illegal. The law simply needs to be properly enforced.
While I agree with the substance of this post, that underpaying labor to funnel wealth to owners is wrong, that is currently not illegal. (Pro tip: it’s capitalism.)
Each of these two problems requires a vastly different solution. Conflating the two only makes it more difficult to solve either.
Things have meaning. In the process of expanding the meaning, the meaning is made less pointed. If it has less of a point, it becomes broad (or diluted). So to make the original point, one must find new words, since the original definition has been so watered down and broadened.
The definition of words can change, but you’ve made me notice: there’s something more insidious and dishonest potentially going on here.
“Name is definition” is not just making a linguistic association, which, as you say, can change across time and community.
It’s also saying, “when you heard name before, what the speaker meant was definition.” Which, in this case, can be a lie. That’s abuse of teaching authority.
Now that’s not the whole of it, and you have a point. Just you made me notice this aspect now.
Chiming in with those who want to keep the specific meaning of wage theft, to better address that already-egregious problem, how about a new name for this.
Value theft. Or, Profit theft.
Youre so right, exploration through waged labour isn’t even illegal!
youre like that douche who scolded me for telling someone retail workers minimum wages are .30c higher than they actually are. Oh youre technically right, thank god we’re building a bridge and that .30c really makes a difference.
I think it’s worth keeping ‘wage theft’ to that particular definition, to help with tackling what is a big problem and legally recognised (as illegal). And, as someone else said, so workers don’t dismiss it as a far-off ideal and miss the chance to fight for their illegally-stolen wages.
Wage theft in the sense of theft of fair share of generated value/profit, needs a new name.
How about profit theft? Value theft?
After all, calling it wages already accepts the idea of owners and employees.
And “lemon” has a very specific definition when applied to used cars so that dealerships can sell junkers with engines that blow up after 6 months and get away with it. Doesn’t make it right, and doesn’t make the car any less of a lemon.
Lemon actually has a set legal definition as well. A car isn’t a lemon because you don’t like it, or even if it breaks down immediately after you buy it.
It even varies BY STATE.
https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/vehicle-lemon-laws-by-state/
So here:
“To qualify for protection, the defect must be reported to the manufacturer and given a reasonable number of attempts to perform the repair. If the vehicle is out of service for 30 calendar days or more, you may pursue a replacement or refund.”
But across the river:
“If your car experiences a serious defect or a problem that makes it unreliable or unsafe within 2 years or 24,000 miles of delivery, you may send a written request asking for a replacement vehicle.”
I agree that it is wrong. However, in your example you were sold a bad car either way. Wage theft is stealing/keeping wages you are legally owed, while not sharing the profits, while again still wrong, nothing was stolen from you. You just weren’t given more.
it is stealing, even if it is in accordance with a contract. those contracts are signed between unequal parties, effectively under duress
“you weren’t given more” is too weak. What happens is you are not given a fair share of the value of your work
Making too much profit and not passing it to employees may be highly unethical, but it’s not legally wage theft.
That’s capitalism.
Thank you for this. I used to hear the term “wage theft” and associate it with underpaying workers relative to the value they produce, until I learned that wage theft refers to underpaying workers relative to what they’re contractually entitled to.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that it’s a problem to pay workers far less than the value they give, but “you’re not paying me what I’m worth” is not as egregious a problem as “you’re not paying me what you agreed to pay me.”
In most cases, underpayment can’t be fixed by an individual for themselves without a wide scale strike (which many workers aren’t in a good position to risk,) but wage theft is currently illegal and can be addressed by filing a complaint. So it’s better to keep it clear what wage theft is so that the average worker doesn’t dismiss it as some communist idea, at least until wage theft is no longer the greatest form of theft in the US.
Thank you. I came to say something similar. Wage theft is already a big legal problem that doesn’t get enough attention or action to fix it. Don’t intentionally mix it with a separate ethical issue making the legal issue even less likely to be addressed. They are similar, even related, issues. But they are not the same, nor will they be addressed the same. Don’t conflate them.
Yep. Big bird’s description is the increase of exploitation on the workers. Wage theft is denying wages you are due. Very similar in how they effect you and how they feel, definitionally different.
I remember my first encounter with wage theft. Fortunately, I was drilled with the whole DONT WORK FOR FREE philosophy.
Boss asked me to go grab some things from the supermarket before my shift. I said am I on the clock? He said, “It’s on the way. What’s the problem?”
I pretended like I forgot and played stupid. And he sent me back out AFTER I clocked in.
Folks coming in here “ðÆt’S nOt WeIdJ þeFt ĐæT’s KæPiTeLiZm!” running face first into the point and still missing it.
Also, don’t forget spending more fighting unionization than the higher wages and better working standards would cost because it’s not even about profits to these parasites, it’s about spite and getting to lord over people with nowhere else to go on short notice.
Because profit shouldn’t exist. AAt no point in time does the top of an org get to plunder all the money generated from everyone working inside it. Time and time again we’ve seen there is no actual risk to buying an already profitable business and stripping it for parts or just gleaming the profit. So why do we have to burden all the costs and risks of embedding ourselves within an organization with no clear gains? Fuck the entire system, and fuck heirarchies.
At no point in time does the top of an org get to plunder all the money generated from everyone working inside it.
??
Unless they own slave and have slave work on the company to generate revenue, worker are being paid to do work. Whether paid fairly or not, and whether they pay bonus or not, that’s another story, but saying profit shouldn’t exists is just as stupid and extreme.
