Blame Reagan (again/still). The biggest cause of the discrepancy is allowing stock buybacks. It's too attractive to ceos/boards/investors to take their profits and use it to pump equity price rather than allocate it to wages and other direct investment in the company.

Fortunately, it's a pretty simple first step - ban stock buybacks

Wags theft is when you make workers clock out for meetings or make tipped staff do back of house work, misusing terms just desensitizes people to them.

No it isn't.

My boss requires me to be on call, without pay. That's wage theft.

Also, if you're not getting a yearly raise at least to match inflation then you're being paid less.

Just because the actual defined term requires a law to be broken does not mean there cannot be a colloquial use that illustrates how unjust it is to continue grinding down wages to maximize surplus value.

Language is dynamic, after all.

I get what you're saying, though, and technically speaking, you are correct. I'm not fully sure where I stand on the misuse of this word in this context, tbh.

Care to define it for us?

Well as long we're arguing about the definitions and use of words the elites are happy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft