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stevedidwhat_infosec , (edited )

Are any of these stats actual stats or part of a study or anything other than a watermarked, compressed meme format that someone can cite? Almost election time and getting stats and facts straight rn is pretty important

GladiusB ,
@GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

I mean we should want actual facts even when it’s not an election

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

I don’t think anyone on the planet disagrees with this, were you under a different impression?

GladiusB ,
@GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

Your last sentence seems to add that during elections it is more important to be factual. I think my point is we should be holding those news networks that cannot do that even without elections accountable and not consuming their product.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

I’m fairly confident in saying all people want truth all the time.

I wasn’t addressing that at all - I’m saying it’s even more important to be double checking and fact checking during election season because that’s when we’ve seen foreign adversaries try and push fake news and other bs to muddy waters, fool and bend some populace, trick and misinform others as a sort of “backdoor” for future wins, etc.

Not because truth is more valuable during election season, but because lies are more common.

TimewornTraveler ,

It’s not about when to want things, it’s about when to look out for things. Yes, you should always be aware of tornadoes, but you should pay extra attention during tornado season.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Dude you said this better than I did lol

Appreciate your comment/clarification!

PunnyName ,

Phenomenal analogy!

To expand on tornados specifically, re: watch vs warning

  • Watch: we have the ingredients for tacos
  • Warning: tacos are imminent!
kamenlady ,
@kamenlady@lemmy.world avatar

How did tacos get in this thing? Now I’m hungry

PunnyName ,

Me too! God dammit!

nexas_XIII ,

I’m not going to link exactly to the photo since it’s on Reddit, but it may be from a Midwest state in the USA subreddit

KidnappedByKitties ,

Good to ask for sources during peak election interference season!

TimewornTraveler , (edited )

Good question. I wondered the same thing: could I see a shareable source that one might take more seriously than a meme?

Here’s some things I found on DDG:

US DOL stats on wage theft

Then I found a couple more sources, one of which has OP’s image, and both point to the same article from an organization called the EPI which I’ve never heard of. It seems to be some big NGO that’s been around since the 80s but really vetting the credibility of this source is a bit beyond my attention span right now.

The EPI seems to have credible sources in that article and seems to cite them appropriately. The larceny et al. crime stats seem to come from an FBI data set from 2012. The EPI article itself is from 2014, so that eases one potential concern of cherry picking old data compared to current inflation numbers. But it’s also worth noting that ten year-old data isn’t great. That said, is it hard to believe that not much has changed in ten years? The figures seem reasonably trustworthy given this brief (BRIEF) assessment.

Great question, keep on askin’.

Zacryon ,

Thanks for looking and providing a bit of insight!

Asafum ,

Thanks for the info!

I honestly wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised to find that it’s worse now. :/

Pandantic , (edited )
@Pandantic@midwest.social avatar

Someone on Reddit found the source:

website with write up and graph

Website where the numbers came from

Edit: Re(ve)ddit link from 2 yrs ago if anyone cares.

Zacryon ,

Thank you for the links!

Fal ,
@Fal@yiffit.net avatar

Also I wonder if this is a fair comparison. Shouldn’t wage theft be compared to all other civil penalties imposed on people, not just criminal theft?

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Hey!!

You beat me to the point! >:(

There’s no way that the stats here are legit stats because they’d account for the most glaring issue: you’re comparing groups of people that follow the laws of economics and individuals who commit a crime.

It’s like comparing an apple to the root system of an orange tree

Like sure we can compare them, but what’s the fucking point when one is so much different…

Stealing “wages” also shouldn’t be treated the same as stealing everything out of someone’s pocket - are we talking a dollar per day? Are we talking about reports of robbery (common for insurance fraud so there’s noise in that data) or confirmed and sentenced theft? Etc etc

Dieinahole ,

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Stealing wages is theft. And a far more insidious kind of theft.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

I didn’t say that, I said we shouldn’t be treating them 1:1 - I want to know the truth of exactly how the “crime” happened so I can fairly assess and not be making judgments and decisions based off bad science/bad statistics…

But let’s jump to conclusions ig

my_hat_stinks ,

you’re comparing groups of people that follow the laws of economics and individuals who commit a crime.

Are you trying to suggest that wage theft isn’t a crime? I think your biggest mistake here is believing that stealing from an individual employee is somehow not as bad as other kinds of theft, you’re like a reverse Robin Hood.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Not at all! Obviously, everyone deserves to be paid a fair wage…

Why would I be asking for actual truth and science if I didn’t care about people getting paid fairly? That wouldn’t make sense

I was just saying that wage theft and actual physical thefts are different and have some specific concerns that I’d want to see weighed in the stats as an example

GoodEye8 ,

The point you’re missing is we’re not talking about some Marxian extraction of surplus value that for all intents and purposes is legal wage theft. We’re talking about actual illegal wage theft where employers are not paying out the money they’re legally obligated to pay out. For example paying below minimum wage or not paying for overtime work etc. That is functionally no different to someone robbing you on the street. In both cases something of value, that you legally own (or in case of wage theft are obligated to receive), is taken from you.

The employers are not following some laws of economics, they’re just straight up committing a crime.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

The point you’re missing is that you have completely misunderstood me.

I wasn’t saying that wage theft isn’t a criminal act.

I was asking for legitimate source/vetting to remove noise and any other dangerous mis-judgments that happen commonly from amateur stats work. It’s very easy to make an incorrect statement based off of bad or poorly portrayed stats. Was not at all saying that they aren’t a crime, just that all the facts need to be on the table about the data so we can make true and informed judgments from it.

Hoping this clears things up, I’m not sure how much clearer I can get haha

Edit: removed a small chunk - thought you were the person I was talking to originally.

GoodEye8 ,

I’ve misunderstood you? Well what did you actually say?

you’re comparing groups of people that follow the laws of economics and individuals who commit a crime.

One group follows the laws of economics (as in not a crime) and the other group commits crimes? Or did you mean this part

I was just saying that wage theft and actual physical thefts are different

Which you haven’t explained how they’re different, except for the part where you’re saying one isn’t a crime and the other is.

Was not at all saying that they aren’t a crime, just that all the facts need to be on the table about the data so we can make true and informed judgments from it.

But the facts were on the table? This guy gave the numbers before the comment you replied to even existed and then there was also this guy who found the source on reddit, also before your comment. Now you could argue federation delay and you didn’t see them the first time, but if you really cared about finding the data you could’ve found the data. But I don’t think you really care that much the data because you also started your first comment with:

There’s no way that the stats here are legit stats…

Seems to me like you made up your mind before you even questioned whether they’re factual or not.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

I haven’t gotten the time to look through the number yet, it’s on my list. Responding to these is pretty quick. But you’ve made up your mind about me already I guess…

I was implying in the example listed that we should be fully aware of the differences of the two items portrayed, which a good solid source usually does and was my justification for having asked for one first. Hope this clears things up.

my_hat_stinks ,

I literally quoted the part where you said that wage theft was “groups of people that follow the laws of economics” and other types of theft being compared was “individuals who commit a crime”. The only reasonable interpretation is that you believe wage theft isn’t a crime; you are, at best, downplaying wage theft as an issue. If there’s a misunderstanding it stems entirely from you saying exactly the thing you’re being accused of saying.

You also said, and once again I’ll quote you directly:

Stealing “wages” also shouldn’t be treated the same as stealing everything out of someone’s pocket - are we talking a dollar per day?

But why not? In what way is someone stealing $100 from your wallet worse than your employer stealing $100 from your paycheck? I’d argue wage theft is in fact worse; that’s someone with power stealing from those they have power over. That is not a good thing.

I’d also like to point out that so far nobody has criticised you for asking for sources, that’s just deflection. You’re being criticised for the views you personally expressed in this thread.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Because theft is a one time occurrence and offense.

Wage theft is repeated.

Thefts here could also be including report-only theft where insurance fraud frequently happens and is a source of noise

Which i specifically said and you (conveniently) left out here in favor of the opinion you’ve already made up about me.

I think we can probably end this convo now.

my_hat_stinks ,

So your argument is that stealing $10 ten times can’t be compared to stealing $100 once? That’s obviously nonsense.

You’ve still not addressed the fact you said wage theft is “groups [following] the laws of economics” but other theft is “individuals who commit a crime”. This is what you were being criticised for. Just so we’re absolutely clear: you separated theft into two distinct categories, one “following the laws of economics” (ie wage theft) and another “individuals who commit a crime” (ie other theft). This would mean wage theft is not committing a crime. You even literally put “crime” in scare quotes when referring to wage theft. This is what you are being criticised for. Nothing else. Not anything that you later brought up and nobody else commented on. Just that one view that you said, by yourself, unrelated to the data presented or the source of that data.

You downplayed wage theft as a crime.

Nobody’s talking about you asking for sources or commenting on specific aspects of the data because it’s not what people are pissed about. This is like if you draw a cock and balls on the Mona Lisa but when people yell at you you just refuse to acknowledge it and keep talking about your time in art school. Nobody cares about art school, it’s all about the cock and balls.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,
  1. Not at all what I was saying, once again. I’m saying that, that fact needs to be explicitly stated, just like you did. But it isn’t here. That’s one problem.
  2. Wage theft isn’t cut and dry and it isn’t specific at all. Here’s a definition: Wage theft occurs when employers do not pay workers according to the law. Examples of wage theft include paying less than minimum wage, not paying workers overtime, not allowing workers to take meal and rest breaks, requiring off the clock work, or taking workers’ tips.

Of the data related to wage theft and theft, I wanted a break down of what those very large definitions meant specifically here, so that we can be sure to account for everything on the table, and not round over stats into higher-level, more generalized categories.

There’s more trucks than cars on the road because businesses employee people for most of the day, most people have jobs, and there’s a high enough amount of jobs requiring driving trucks on the roads.

^ this is the logic train I’d like to follow for these stats. Not just “this wide category had wide results”

Which I will do when I have time to actually sit down and look at the stats/source.

melpomenesclevage ,

I wish desperately that were true.

boatswain ,

I think you mean “than other thieves stole.” Don’t want to accidentally imply they aren’t thieves.

HiddenLayer5 ,

The thieves that get arrested vs the thieves that end up on magazines celebrating their theft.

dumbass , (edited )
@dumbass@lemy.lol avatar

The big red supermarket I work for in Aus is being investigated by the government over their record profits during a cost of living crisis and all of a sudden they decided, for no reason, to check to see if they had been paying us right for the last decade and suprise, suprise, they’ve underpayed workers and are now paying it back as a “sorry”, yeah sorry you got caught.

RamblingPanda ,

They’re probably still paying too little. And charging too much.

melpomenesclevage ,

I bet there’s not interest on it either, so they still made a profit.

Just enough to pacify idiots. Organize your workplace (to crime)

Crampon ,

In Norway people are adviced to get fucked for pointing out the record profits of the grocery cartel. We have 3 chains running the same wares for similar prices. The main fruit importer is owned by two of the chains.

The chains are NorgesGruppen, Reitan-gruppen and Coop. That’s it. Custom barriers are preventing any competition from establishing.

Our worst wares are of decent quality, but our best wares are of poor quality compared to other European states.

We are now the worst country on the happiness index in Scandinavia.

Kallioapina ,

Please add sources to this infographic, maybe in the lower section, and this can be used as an actual, tactical weapon in everyday interactions.

And no, this comment is not an attempted underhanded attack against this infographic. People are taught in modern global world to trust researched sources. It’s an rhetorical weapon, even if based on truth (which I hope this infographic is based on).

And no, I’m not a fucking LLM. Im just finnish and a little bit drunk.

InternetCitizen2 ,

Im just finnish and a little bit drunk.

Most sober Finn.

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

Someone on Reddit found the source:

website with write up and graph

Website where the numbers came from

Edit: Re(ve)ddit link from 2 yrs ago if anyone cares.

lemmy.world/comment/9007447

Jyek ,

I had an employer who would tell us that we were committing “Time Theft” any time we were on the clock and not actively working on something at any moment of the day. When California DoL started cracking down on my city, my employer started complaining about government overreach and “State Sanctioned Time Theft” when he was required to give us 2x 15 min breaks on the clock on top of a whopping 30 minutes off the clock for lunch.

FlyingSquid OP ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I had an employer who tried to make us clock out if we were at work and there was no actual work for us to do.

Thankfully, he was the sort of employer you could literally say “go fuck yourself” to and not get fired. Which every one of the handful of employees at his small business did. So he went back on that.

LordCrom ,

Because the gov gets it’s cut. That’s why. It’s easier to keep 1 big corp happy so long as they shuffle over that 15% or less.

Plus, no one in gov wants to be the one that forced a large corp to shutdown costing a bunch of normal people jobs.

Why do you think military contractors setup factories in all 50 states to make 1 type of aircraft… Senators that don’t want more fighter jets? Well the factory that employs 2000 of it’s citizens might just have to close down then … Oh I see you changes your mind …here’s a campaign contribution instead

jkrtn ,

If the government was motivated by getting a cut we’d still have correct tax rates for billionaires. Unfortunately, everything in government is done by corrupt individuals whose signatures can be purchased for laughably small amounts. It’s exactly as you point out, one campaign contribution and they will sign whatever legislation you want.

Same with SCOTUS but they don’t have campaigns so you have to straight-up bribe them with RVs or luxury fishing trips.

AngryCommieKender ,

nytimes.com/…/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.ht…

Though they refer indirectly to the 1982 SCOTUS case of Harlow V Fitzgerald, this law applies to politicians and judges as well as police. They just haven’t upheld it in over 150 years, because someone illegally changed the law in 1874, and it wasn’t noticed until last year.

Ulysses S Grant referenced section 1983 of the federal code when he was pulled over, for the third time in his life, in 1872, while sitting as president, for “speeding on a horse in the city limits of Washington DC.” The officer tried to let him go, and he said that Congress had just passed a law about that, and no one, not even a sitting president, is above the law. He paid the ticket. The other two times he was pulled over he was only a general, and it was in the early 1860s while a minor bit of treason and insurrection was going on.

melpomenesclevage ,

Almost right. Right direction at least.

Luisp ,

That’s only from wages, it’s not counting all the other forms of crimes that companies do, like speculation with physical stock, false marketing, investor fraud, inventory destruction, monopoly, intelectual theft, etc etc

Ultragigagigantic ,
@Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world avatar

This isn’t even countin the theft of the surplus labor value the parasites steal away from the working class. That same money is then used to purchase the government over time.

Asafum ,

I understand that argument, but this is clean cut “by law” of literally law breaking theft. Our social contract “allows” exploitation of the working class. :(

melpomenesclevage ,

Both points are valid.

Its a shit deal, and they’re not even pretending to keep up their end. What kind of whipped dumbfucks must we be to ever keep ours?

Asafum ,

I absolutely agree, I was just trying to get at the idea that this information can’t exactly be argued with if we’re going by theft in respect to the actual law.

Once you bring labor value theory into it you get a ton of resistance and closed minds. It’s better to keep that out of the equation for now if this information is to be used to convince people of an actual legal problem that isn’t being addressed where there isn’t any new law or legislation that needs to be created, just enforcement of existing laws.

melpomenesclevage ,

You don’t even need labor theory of value though. Definitely a step up, less wrong and even flirts with justice sometimes, but you don’t need to say what’s right to prove some obvious bullshit is wrong.

This system doesn’t work for us, we didn’t consent, and instead of fixing any of it they just hand their thugs more fancy military surplus shit.

The fact you think laws will literally ever be on the side of justice tho, that’s just adorable. Laws are an excuse to divide the population, to create exceptions that can be safely targeted without resistance from the broader population. They’re literally just some divide and conquer shit. Don’t support their premise. If you want to do something based on their propaganda and try to make then good after, we can argue about it then if at least one of us and a sock still exists (if I’m the sock, please use real buttons, no marker bullshit)

If the laws don’t respect you, don’t respect them. Only way to fix anything.

melpomenesclevage ,

Oh as if the government wasnt ways their creature. Before they were ceos and landlords inheriting daddy’s class ring and property deeds, they were barons and lords inheriting daddy’s title.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

All those violations are what the lawsuits agreed to or were documented.

There’s many many companies that violate the law and get away with it.

Where theft is always reported, for insurance and tracking reasons.

HiddenLayer5 ,

The most exploited people are also the least likely to report it because they’re afraid of losing what little employment they have.

melpomenesclevage ,

Gotta organize these people into crime.

melpomenesclevage ,

Almost like laws are just a bullshit excuse, and will literally never be on the side of justice? Or something?

Filthmontane ,

This is why you should organize your workplace.

melpomenesclevage ,

Fuck organized labor, do organized crime. Steal your workplace.

Filthmontane ,

There was a time they were one and the same.

melpomenesclevage ,

Was?

Not counting the afl-cia, who if you look at the deals they make, are absolutely agents of capital.

Filthmontane ,

That’s just like, your opinion man

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Being anti-union is the real leftism, bro

Filthmontane ,

In Bizarro world

xenoclast ,

We were looking… but we can’t (or won’t) enforce our power through threat or use of force. So they can take from us without fear.

melpomenesclevage ,

Because the force is all theirs. I wonder if there’s some sort of, like, historically effective solution to this?

xenoclast ,

Nothing that hasn’t left another greedy selfish group in power afterwards, unfortunately.

You can get a decent go of it for a while though.

It’s almost like its humans that are the problem.

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Also not represented here is asset forfeiture by law enforcement which is now routine. In 2015-ish, it was about $5 billion a year, nationwide.

Some states have made laws against it. Some states don’t enforce those laws while others do. (Police often will take that chance.) I don’t know how the figure has shifted since.

AngryCommieKender ,

According to the reports to Congress from the DOJ, they are seeing a steady increase of sized assets, however these reports clearly don’t cover the majority of asset forfeiture cases as the balance sheet is in the low millions, rather than billions.

www.justice.gov/afp/reports

acetanilide ,

I don’t know how to read the balance sheets but all the numbers are reported in thousands, so it looks like billions to me. (I’m not sure which numbers refer to assets actually seized)

AngryCommieKender ,

Ahh, I’m operating on four hours of sleep, so I missed that. I was reading it as millions.

acetanilide ,

No problem, I did too but one of the tables didn’t make sense and then I saw the heading lol

melpomenesclevage ,

As if the numbers matter, or anyone can trust anything these thugs say.

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Funny story. (Funny as in peculiar, not as in laughable.) So in the 1970s during the cocaine trafficking wars, congress ordered the FBI to gather all the officer-involved homicides across the nation and report them to the BJS for analysis for sake of transparency. It was an order the FBI ignored. In the meantime there were enough mismatches between known forensic police reports, known forensic data and witness accounts to start some volunteer projects to track officer-involved killing. Since FOIA information was resistant to release, and sometimes came over-redacted, they relied on tracking incidents through news, obituaries and coroner reports to link dead bodies to police bullets, or police brutality.

It was a thing and a concern, and like our obscenely terrible prisons, no-one cared much.

…Until 2014 and the killing of Michael Brown leading to the Ferguson unrest of 2014, and a public story as problematic as the Warren Commission statement. Witness accounts still conflict with the police report which was revised several times post hoc to match the ballistics, eventually leading to an accounting suggesting Brown acted very strangely (rather than getting shot while his hands were up, consistent with the witness accounts.) Two things really put in sharp bas relief the problematic nature of the incident:

One was that Brown (dead or alive) was allowed to sit and bake in the sun for hours, and Wilson was in no hurry to get medical care to a bleeding Brown, which ran contrary to the image of law enforcement presented for years in Law ＆ Order and dozens of other pro-police TV shows. And secondly, the police response to the protest was to send in officers by the hundreds in their MRAPs, show poor fire discipline brandishing their weapons at the protestors, and then, at the minute of Curfew, roll around in the MRAP, wrecking lawns parks and streets and lobbing CS Gas grenades willy-nilly into backyards and homes. The police looked like children on sugar and caffeine playing with NERF weapons, whooping like drunken Texans. And half the nation thought this was acceptable, possibly coinciding with the Ferguson affair taking place in a black-majority neighborhood.

That week, several news agencies started their own projects to catalogue deaths cause by law enforcement. It was a bad time for it, since phone cameras were becoming ubiquitous. Police started trying to confiscate phones (they still do, even in states with laws to protect the recording of police in action). The volunteer services tracking police violence traded notes. In 2014, the Washington Post tracked about a thousand deaths by law enforcement. Around 2015, meta analysis averaged it about four a day, noting that a lot of them fall through the cracks. A report in 2017 showed that precinct coroners routinely cover for their brethren in blue to erase questionable action. A lot of people had strokes or heart attacks or some other fatal outcome just before police bullets punched through them. So the total officer-involved death-toll could be under reported by as much as 75%, much like sexual assault.

After George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020 (during the COVID-19 lockdown) and the whole nation erupted in protests and unrest, the FBI decided it might be a good idea to start tracking and reporting officer-involved homicide, as they were asked to do decades previously. This is not to necessarily get an accurate report, but to publish an official report that people can point to when they want to say it’s not really that bad. After all precincts self-report, and we know how honest they are inclined to be, right?

Well it turns out they’re not even willing to report. It turns out police generally are crap at filing incident reports, unlike Nicholas Angel of the MPS. Even if the FBI wanted to just seize precinct reports and sift through them, they’re not there, or often miss critical details. And our precincts internal affairs subdivisions are more interested in keeping incidents low rather than running a clean precinct. These all inform the current ACAB assumption today: It is just plum impossible to be a good cop on account that everyone is expected to cover for the bad ones. And they do, even when they lose sleep about it, go full alcoholic and eventually quit. Andy Taylor, Barney Miller and even James Gordon would have no place in law enforcement in the US.

So, BJS stats are official but we can expect that incidents that make the justice system look bad (at any level) are under-reported.

Anyhow, you can check out Tim Cushing’s beat on Techdirt as asset forfeiture news often flashes across there, including the rare happy moments when someone gets their money back, or an officer gets rightly dressed down for abusing his power to take stuff.

melpomenesclevage ,

Tolerating these awful white supremacist property gangs is why our society is so fucked. Gotta get these thugs off the streets.

rockSlayer ,

To answer the question in the title, it’s because corporations have more rights than us.

melpomenesclevage ,

You are not a citizen; where’s your badge? Your articles of incorporation?

occhineri ,

And that’s exactly why I steal from corporations whenever I can. Shoplifting, online piracy, fare dodging, etc. are applied everyday class struggle.

unreasonabro ,

Wait til you see what they stole from the government - literally the ability to govern!

kill em all and let dogs sort em out, or whatever

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