It's a term of art. In practice, I don't believe failure to pay a debt is ever prosecuted as theft, but it's not economically distinguishable from it even if a

It's a term of art. In practice, I don't believe failure to pay a debt is ever prosecuted as theft, but it's not economically distinguishable from it even if a legal distinction is made. This is effectively the basis of accrual accounting whereby firms claim payments as an inflow on their income statements when a good or service is delivered, not when payment is received. Possibly worth noting if you reversed something like the McDonald's example, going into a restaurant and agreeing to pay for a burger, they give you a burger, and you don't pay, I'm pretty sure that would be prosecuted as theft. The terms of exchange don't specify payment in future installments with interest. Labor seemingly works the same way. Batching payments in biweekly installments is for convenience because it would be impractical to disburse funds continuously, not because you're loaning your labor. If you want to say they're not stealing money, fine, but they're stealing work. I guess the law doesn't seem to see it this way, though.