The government is cracking down. A task force is being created with a senior federal police officer leading the charge.

In a show of bipartisanship senior Liberal and Labor Party figures have both agreed that the problem must be stopped. The problem they’re so keen to confront is not global warming, war, or poverty, but so-called welfare cheats claiming benefits.

Social services minister Scott Morrison has promised to “put a strong welfare cop on the beat”, and Bill Shorten has been quick to add that the ALP doesn’t like welfare fraud either, before helpfully reminding the media that “it is illegal”.

This is only the latest in a long line of crackdowns on welfare recipients. Every year ministerial press releases, TV exposés and newspaper column inches are dedicated to worrying about “dole bludgers” and scheming welfare fraudsters.

A quick glance at the facts shows just how out of proportion this attention is. Of the 7.3 million people who received Centrelink or family assistance payments last year, just over 1,000 were investigated for potential fraud.

 “Unfortunately, it is a common misconception that there are significant levels of fraud in the social security system”, National Welfare Rights Network President Kate Beaumont said in response to the government plan.

“Recent research commissioned by the Australian Council of Trade Unions found that people think that 17 percent of social security recipients are prosecuted for ‘welfare fraud’ whereas in fact, the real proportion is just 0.02 per cent.”

The social services minister knows the facts and figures. Talking up the non-existent “problem” of welfare fraud helps create a sense that those who receive social security payments are a problem, or are undeserving of an income. For the government and its big business friends, it’s extremely useful to give the impression that “bludgers” and “cheats” are found in the dole queues, rather than corporate boardrooms and mansions.

Who are the real crooks in our society? There has been recent attention on the billions of dollars shifted around by major corporations in tax minimisation schemes. But under capitalism this sort of creative accounting is just window dressing for a more pervasive and fundamental theft carried out by the bosses.

Capitalism is based on systematic cheating and robbery. Every workplace, from a sweatshop to an office block, is based on the exploitation of workers. It is wholesale theft. But, unlike the lords and barons of old who openly took what others produced, the exploitation at the heart of business and industry is disguised, normalised and perfectly legal.

Company owners and investors don’t do the work or create the goods. Often they don’t even do the paperwork. Yet the value that is created ends up under their control. Mining magnates like Gina Rinehart have added billions to their net worth without ever having to set foot in a mine.

For the rest of us, it is very different. When we go to work, we produce a certain amount of value per day. We only ever receive a fraction of that back as pay. We work part of the day creating the value that is repaid to us in the form of wages, and spend the rest working just for the boss’s benefit. It’s no more fair or equal than it was for the peasants of Europe centuries ago, who were forced to work for free on their lord’s estate.

It is clear that something exploitative is happening in the sweatshops where workers are paid so little they can’t even afford to buy the goods that their labour created. But exploitation isn’t confined to the lowest paid workplaces.

Even in the comparatively well paid Australian mining industry Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 2008-09 (during the mining boom) showed that the mining companies made on average $470,000 in profit per worker. But labour costs were only $130,000 per worker.

That the workers of the world create the wealth that the rich steal and hoard is confirmed in every strike. When miners in the Bowen Basin went on strike in 2012, BHP lost billions of dollars and the company tried every trick they knew to force the workers back. Without workers no new value is created and the flow of profit stops.

On the other hand, if the major investors in BHP decided to spend the rest of their lives on holiday nothing would change.

In our society the greatest thieves of all are revered, while the people who actually worked to create the wealth often are demonised.

Corporate crooks such as Alan Bond are venerated by respectable society, and state funerals are held for the most successful exploiters and bludgers like Kerry Packer. In reality, the bloated bank balances and business fortunes of today’s rich are no less revolting than the blubber on an old feudal lord, who grows fat while those who work his land starve.