Do you personally feel that wage theft isn't theft?
Same hypothetical, except the cherries Joe picks aren't actually Joe's—they're Jill's. Jill owns some farmland where cherries grow, and she lets people pick them. They do so on the premise that cherry pickers get paid by Jill on Tuesdays. Joe moves to town and picks cherries there all week and then hands them over. Jill says "thanks" and then slams the door in Joe's face. Does this fail to meet the threshold for the appropriate use of the word "theft"? Joe has not had anything taken from him[1]—certainly not any physical property[2] he could do anything else with or ever plausibly argue "That's mine" to anyone willing to lend a sympathetic ear—because the cherries were never his.[3]
1. 30e7f23b81e476dd7afc8f4e23401aed004567526f8dc58ca97fc3339fe5d2bf
2. d38b2ef315ebb47a44a28abf7884c7fecf05b11f0d34a875fffc89ce4f955e81
3. 188e9eee6f835b8a6bd2f927de75006cd87215d10dee9a0225e320f3ee6d4b65