As corporations are people, I advocate jail time for companies.
Jail time for a company? How would that work?Stock price is immediately frozen and placed on a restricted trades list.
No sells, no buys for the duration of the sentence (maybe a period of time for retail traders to exit gracefully at the locked price).
A member of the IRS is now on the accounting team for the length of the sentence + 5 years.
For “safety” this IRS auditor is cycled every 6 months.
During that time, quarterly audits, and any profits go directly to the aggrieved parties and/or Fed coffers.
The plan would pay for itself on the first sentence passed down.What if the company closes shop instead of compliance?
Easy, IRS performs a Civil Forfeiture and immediately gains control of all aspects of the business. All stock options are cancelled, C-Level and higher immediately lose all stock and bonuses. Liquidate the remains and again provide for the aggrieved and bank the rest.(maybe a period of time for retail traders to exit gracefully at the locked price).
That’s… not how stocks work. Retail traders can’t sell without a counterparty to buy from them, and the last thing I would want to do is to set up some kind of government entity buying stocks of criminal companies at artificially-high prices just to bail out investors.
Besides, even retail investors should’ve done their due diligence and known they were signing up for the possibility of losing their money. If they don’t like being held accountable for their investments, maybe they should call up their legislator and support piercing the corporate veil more often.
If the only complaint about the premise was an attempt to help out non-insiders, with personal assets under 100k, then scratch that MAYBE off and let’s write some legislature.
Very few people with personal assets under 100k are buying individual stocks to begin with. Normal working-class people, if they’re saving at all, are very likely just buying mutual funds inside their retirement accounts.
Frankly, you’d have to really be trying in order to be in the tiny Venn diagram intersection of people who would (a) be screwed by the above commenter’s proposal and (b) deserve sympathy for it. IMO it’s not worth carving out an exception for.
Companies issue stock grants in lieu of additional salary to incentivise employees to stay. any impact to stocks would also take away money from labor.
would also open up corporate warfare to who can fund corporate espionage or politicians to close down competitors.
Messing with the stocks directly even if they did work like that would do nothing. Pausing the stock would cause the price to immediately return the market rate the moment it gets relisted. Not to mention that only punishes publicly traded companies. I’d be willing to say wage theft happens more frequently with private companies who wouldn’t be effected in any significant way if you paused their stocks.
A way better punishment would be to suspend their business license temporarily. The effects would be almost identical to sending someone to jail as it prevents them from earning any income for that period of time while still being on the financial hook for any debts.
sure, the price would change when it gets relisted, BUT that doesn’t matter, fucking stock valuation is a reflection just on the popularity of the company, but they can’t trade the stock, making it a dead fish in portfolios for years
You’re acting like stocks are some sort of magic thing you can just mess with to punish the company.
But in fact what would happen this would immediately ruin most pension funds for example.
Removed by mod
I think… they should start with … paying the wages that got stiffed- with some steep interest. Then, the company gets fined to oblivion… and the individuals responsible for it go to jail.
The cost of the crime also needs to include the probability of getting caught for any business to consider the crime more than an overhead. For example, if the probability of getting caught and having to backpay + fine is only 5%, the backpay + fine needs to be at least 20x greater in cost than if they’d not committed the crime (5% x 20 = 100%), because they are likely to get away with the crime 19 out of 20 times. That’s only to equalize the financial* consequences. Then you need to multiply again to add significant financial damage.
When you realize the above, the absolute pittance of most fines is even more enraging.
yeah. Every time I hear about the SEC or somebody levying fines… you look at what they made in profits and it’s basically just a solicitation of a bribe. for financial crimes, the start needs to be surrendering all profit associated with said financial crime. then a fine that hurts.
for wage theft specifically, it’s usually happening to people who can’t afford to be stolen from, so I’m okay with a nuclear option.
I’d be all for a really high interest rate, plus a fee based on the size of the company.
An employer doesn’t send you your pay cheque and after months of fighting to get the case heard, they’ll eventually get told by a court to send you your pay cheque. That’s about it.
But if you walked into a store, grabbed an arm full of stuff and walked out, not interacting with anyone while there (no threats, violence, or weapons, just casual); you’ll definitely be fined far above the cost of what you took, while also likely being imprisoned from the moment police officers encounter you (be that outside the store, or later); for most of a day at minimum, possibly several days/weeks depending on sentencing.
I feel like… intentional wage theft should result in
- pay all the money back
- pay a steep fine to the victim.
- added to a blacklist. No longer allowed to work in whatever role they were in where this happened.
- repeat offenders are hanged in the public square
- their assets are seized by the state and auctioned off or something
The ultra wealthy do not fear for their lives, and they should.
It’s really hard to make “intentional” stick, especially when there are layers of bureaucracy and lawyers in between justice and the thief.
Only when it comes to rich people though
They should pay triple the wages owed plus fines. That will start making it hurt.
In our world, restitution is directly proportional to the wealth of the entity stolen from, not the wealth of the entity who does the stealing. It should absolutely be the latter.
As the great 90s philosopher Alan Menken said, “gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat, otherwise we’d get along.”
can keep the fine, but it needs to be a significant percentage, not an insignificant flat value
company has 25 employees? after payment of lost wages, fine is 2% (?) of company’s daily income for as many days as they were in violation
You don’t understand. See, corporations now enjoy all the same rights as an individual, but you can’t put a company in prison, that doesn’t even make sense. so instead we just fine them a small amount they won’t even notice in their books, and then we can call them “punished”, and still tax their ever-increasing profits. everybody who matters wins and all the losers (as judged by their wealth) lose like god intended them to.
it’s like you’ve never even heard of capitalism OR christianity. The bible spells it out: “blessed are the moneylenders, for they do not even need to inherit the earth because they already own both it and you”. Let’s not forget that Jesus kicked the meek out of the temple for not being wealthy enough to even comprehend god’s glory, amen.
Mmmhmm… tell it, lard…
Going to jail is the compromise solution.
“Someone needs to remind the rich unionizing is the compromise we came up with instead of taking them out of their home and beating them to death. They seem to have forgotten.”
—PickleJello (2019)
This is why unions put in grievance systems.
What if the employee who got stiffed gets double what they were shorted? Still jail?
The company pays double, the individual doing the stiffing gets jail.
Hey look! It’s easy points puffin…
“You’ve been stealing wages. Pay me to make the problem go away.”
