Comment by jeffbee

Nobody wants to hear about the major classes of crime: wage theft and tax evasion. Everyone wants 24x7 TV news coverage of a guy stealing shampoo from Target. But the impact of wage theft is even larger than the article states, because it is a major inefficiency for public works projects. Cities send inspectors out to a job site and stop work to ask every laborer if they are getting paid. If they didn't do this the contractors would rip them off every time, but to keep the problem under control they have to do these inspections every week. Massive drag on productivity which could be easily solved by throwing one or two guys in prison instead of relying on fines.