Precisely this. Leftist rhetoric about wages is often framed for other leftists, without addressing the core arguments underpinning centrist and conservative views on why the rich “deserve” their wealth. People say “theft” without making arguments for why our definition of theft needs to change.

I’m in complete agreement with this perspective, but rarely do I see discussions like this address the sticking point centrists and conservatives get hung up on: they don’t believe this is “theft.”

When I told my coworker about the historic productivity-to-wages gap, she argued (paraphrasing), “Could it not be that gap is reflective of the CEOs innovating ways to make their workers increasingly productive, while the value of those workers’ labor hasn’t actually increased, therefore explaining why the minds behind those innovations deserve the wealth?”

This conversation will go nowhere if we keep throwing around terms like “wage theft” and skipping step 1 where we argue the moral determination as to why that is true.