Consider it like this. Wage theft is the largest form of theft in the country by a country mile. But, it's not considered a crime. It's only a civil infraction unless you can prove a fraud charge which is extremely challenging and costly. In other words, an employer can take hundreds of K or even millions out of their peoples' pockets and not be in serious trouble for it.

Going up to a person, a store, an ATM, whatever and taking any amount of money is a serious criminal infraction, on the other hand. Even with no weapon and no threat of force, it's treated that seriously. And I think you and I would probably agree that that's good! We should prosecute theft and robbery severely. But why, then, don't we treat wage theft even close to the same standard? The impact is certainly much wider and more severe.

It's one example among many of how the same behaviors from a poor community are prosecuted much more deeply than those from wealthy communities and businesses.