It's (fortunately) not quite that bad for everyone in America, but that's more because most employers still feel themselves to be bound by the law, at least to

It's (fortunately) not quite that bad for everyone in America, but that's more because most employers still feel themselves to be bound by the law, at least to some extent, than it is because most employees have meaningful recourse if they're told to break it. The situation is changing with the new wave of unionization here, but the 40 years since Reagan shattered the union movement have not been good ones for us. > My overarching point is: if you start to consider that the system is bad, how do you stop everyone else from doing the exact same thing, breaking laws to live? Where do you draw the line? I think that there is a meaningful distinction between "I choose to break the law to survive" and "I choose not to refuse an order to break the law, because to do so risks losing the ability to survive." That said, I think that there's an argument to be made that a society where the laws are used to punish the poor for trying to do the bare minimum to survive is a society that throws all law into contempt.