In Norway, everyone can know how much you earn [video]
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He was shocked. Then next day decided to tell everyone it was a fireable offence to disclose your salary.
Which we then said. That the action of making it a fireable offence is actually illegal and a fireable offence.
(He quit a number of months later)
Edit: In fact salaries used to be even more public, printed out and left in public for review.
So basically nobody does anymore which is a shame in some ways.
OTOH: Keeping everything wide open with no audit in the time of Internet and free access for East European criminals maybe wasn't the right way either. (E.g. you could plan a raid on rich old people based on electronically searchable archives.)
I don't mind since my name is so common, but I emailed the Texas agency that they should put a noindex tag to prevent the page from being used against people with less common names (you can register for the registry via what appears to be a system lacking verification).
Fun story: in my teenage years, when dating my high school sweetheart, I went to visit her grandparents house for the first time.
Arriving at their house, the grandmother quickly pulls out her Taxeringskalender (taxation calendar - a paperback where a company has collected all this public information, and they sell it as a handy book). She begins to look up my surname and tells me how much my parents earn.
After having lived abroad (Japan, Germany and the UK) I've realized the Scandinavian system is weird at times, but they (or we) do their thing and everyone is kind of aiming at the same goal in society. Extreme transparency, and many striving for equality above all.
Secrets are most of the time the tools of cheaters and liers...
Why doesn't Sweden force everyone to publish their sexual history? Medical records? Amount of vacation time?
It's utterly absurd.
Your finances are your private information - unless there is a specific reason - it should be private.
This is a serious transgression of human rights.
Only when there is a compelling reason to keep the data secret which outweighs the public interest (such as the identity of a rape victim) is the data kept secret. People being embarrassed by people finding out how much or little they earn isn't a compelling enough reason.
So, I think in this case, "transparency", "researchers" and "journalists" are all highly irrelevant.
1. Journalists shouldn't write articles about how person X makes €Xm a year. The friend of my cousins husband was abducted when he was a kid, because the press kept writing articles about how wealthy his family was. Why? Just because they could sell a few newspapers. Despicable.
2. Researchers: the data could easily be anonymized.
3. Transparency. Why? Just because you say everything else is public isn't a valid reason (to me). It's not like you have a choice. Are you OK with a list of all of your assets being public? Every property you own, globally? The exact amount of money on your bank account? How about your medical history, so insurers can easily determine how healthy / sick you are? Or your sexual preference?
4. Corruption: BS. I would seriously doubt people would be stupid enough to receive “dirty" money and then declare it to the tax authority. And if they were, they'd probably route it through a company as consulting fees or something.. Be realistic, please.
I disagree. If some CEO says that workers salaries are too high and he himself increased his salary by 50% the last year, that is important for journalists to write about.
> 2. Researchers: the data could easily be anonymized.
Researches are interested in seeing how different variables correlate with salary. Like gender, age, education level, parents social status and so on. Those correlations can't be made on anonymized data.
> 3. Transparency. Why? Just because you say everything else is public isn't a valid reason (to me).
You misunderstand. Transparency is about the government being transparent with it's data, not about ME being transparent. I'm allowed to keep as many secrets as I want -- the government is not. For example if the government had records on my sexual preference or political affiliation, I for sure would prefer if that data was public and not kept secret.
> 4. Corruption: BS. I would seriously doubt people would be stupid enough to receive “dirty" money and then declare it to the tax authority.
A lot of corruption involves one party "gifting" the other something. That kind of corruption has been caught by the tax authority.
Like what? A house? You can't really catch cash transactions.
I would assume that in developed economies the "easiest" and least transparent way of corruption happening is friends doing each other favours. I.e. person A can influence the granting of permits through his friend, person B. In return for helping person C get a permit, he gets a board seat in the company of person D, via person C.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland (don't know if Denmark applies this system) are all well-functioning societies. I would not be surprised if they are some of the world's most well-functioning places around (which is great for getting shit done, but not always fun and free). Ideas of what is right and wrong in other cultures (such as mainland europeans and americans wish for financial privacy) might not always apply in the culture up north. That's fine.
2. As it was stated properly anonymized data would only allow faceting by absolute income and researchers are interested in many other facets.
3. I'm not from Norway (know some people there) so might be mistaken, but as far as I understand only 3 things are public: income, asset-value, tax. Income and asset structure (income may be wage or interest, assets might be cash in a sock/bank, shares or a house) are not disclosed. Health insurers ask you certain questions about your family health (e.g. any known cancer cases for 2 generations or whatever) and it is contract violation and possibly criminal offense to lie. More on this in side note.
4. The very reason a lot of corruption is gotten away with is simply capacity of tax authorities to dig deep, not the clever routing itself.
Side note: As far as I have observed, it is more or less cultural habit in Scandinavia to be obsessed with what I call "what would others think?". Practically this surfaces in two areas: 1. being really conservative about what is considered acceptable (count number of house colors in a neighbourhood :) ) 2. attempts to be better than your neighbour, which increases welfare
Your argument is literally argumentum ad absurdum. You can't show something to be absurd by pointing out that other, hypothetical non-existent things are absurd.
No doubt there are more that don't come to mind immediately.
Presumably it is quite easy for employees to establish, for example, that all black employees at a company are poorly-paid compared to similar white employees. This makes redress possible. In the U.S. it is quite difficult to establish that, even if one has a strong suspicion that it is true, and so redress is rare.
Why don't you just force everyone to put their bank account statements online?
Privacy is a fundamental human right.
Just because someone lives a normal life doesn't mean he's not wealthy. I could be living in a normal street/house, making a normal wage, and making €100,000 a year from investment gains. So what? Get over it.
Cash in an account is fairly easy…but stocks and shares? Property assets? Cars/boats/aircraft? Furniture? Art? Intangible assets such as patents or licences?
In practice I've never met or spoken to anyone who has gone out their way to do this. It's normally just the tabloids outing the salaries of politicians and celebrities once a year.
At times, people are plain dumb.
Same as the "prices should be stated with taxes included or not" debate. Good luck with that in the US. And with the metric system. And in other countries, driving on the left side of the road. It's culture, not logic.
In the US, sales tax differs wildly from state to state, and even from city to city. If you always had to include tax, you couldn't have any TV commercials where a company boasts about their price on something they sell, because it would be impossible to know how high the sales tax would be for every person watching.
Places where tax always has to be included usually has a national sales tax or similar, making it possible to advertise prices with tax included.
I will just notice it somehow isn't a problem in the EU, where taxes differ wildly.
Hence, culture.
then I got a wonderful job as a data admin for an intelligence institution and for a few days when certain maintenance was due I had unlimited access to everyone's earning in my country. THE LIES!
I always have issues negotiating my wage so knowing what other people are earning would imprive my bargaining power.
my point is that for people with poor negotiating skills, like me, knowing how much other people make would have helped me when I was younger.
All in all it is a two way street. We are in this together, so we all pull together etc.
I expect he/she was calling got bluff.
But I've loved looking things up in the naming-registry; seeing how many people in the country share my forename/surname has been fascinating.
Needless to say, the data is still available through P2P networks: https://torrentproject.se/?t=redditi+2005
I can't imagine the company I work at being super excited I'm (for example) doing code reviews; or running a website. Technically, I don't have a clause in my contract forbidding me from doing external work, so long as I give the company 40 hours a week.
I know I am not alone. I know one co-worker makes about a half a million a year in an external business selling car parts. He just works at the company for fun essentially, since he is allowed to play with the entire companies system architecture.
There are plenty of scenarios in which an employer believes that they deserve to know how their employee conducts themselves outside of work, including other jobs, and in those scenarios, this should be specified in the contract. In the news business, working for someone who might intersect with your beat, e.g. making phone calls for the local chapter of Democrats if you're covering politics, will often result in a severe reprimand if not firing. If you want to be a schoolteacher, you can be fired for having worked in porn, even if those days are over. [0]
[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/stacie-halas-fired-calif-teacher...
I've worked for a few organisations where the contract has included clauses on exclusivity and IP assignment.
Each time I've asked for those clauses to be removed before joining them, and each time they've agreed.
Exactly. That's why public income info is a bad idea.
You know exactly how much x or y makes given a or b. This is info that HR has, because they pay for it. If it was public, you'd have it too.
Your bosses also would not be allowed to guilt-trip you into foregoing a raise without them taking on a comparable part of the burden.
Salary secrecy seems like a quintessentially american thing, completely at odds with faith in markets. If you believe in markets, let the labor markets do the best job they possibly can, by informing agents within them and tearing down information asymmetries.
I agree that salary information should be more public. I'm not so sure individual income or other tax information should be.
1. Why would you report that you earn more than you do, then you would just pay more tax than you had to?
2. Why would the employer care that you earn more in total than they pay you?
If you signed with the employer to not have any side business going on then it's a different story. But you would know this in the first place, so you would only complain about not being allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.
(This is my understanding, as a person living in the US anyway.)
If the employee makes more money from that business than from yours, the employee has literally nothing to lose and may start to become sloppy with their work, not take it as seriously as he/she should, etc.
I'd say it's all about control.
This is normally illegal as it violates some integrity laws, but it is ok under current legislation if you have a "utgivningsbevis", something you need to register for to use your freedom of speech in published writing.
The site was poorly built and their full database was leaked nearly instantly.
Having this mindset will help sift out companies that you probably wouldn't want to work for in the first place.
With regards to what I consider to be private information, I just do not think it is the job of the government to publish it.
(I am Scandinavian as well, by the way, although I have chosen to leave - excessive taxation being one on a list of reasons).
It can also increase your ability to negotiate: "This person does the same job as me. That work is value at $X, so I should also be paid $X."
As others have also noted, if I wanted to learn the income of a fellow Norwegian, he would be notified that I had requested this info. This prevents a lot of snooping. I would suspect newspapers and magazines to be among those who request income information the most, and then typically they request information about the wealthiest and most powerful.
I think this builds trust and frees people up from the anxiety of not knowing if they are getting screwed. The other thing is all high performing individuals in society, athletes, actors what have you, their salaries are know.
This isn't as radical as you might think and I think it has benefits for society.
There was an estimate that Norwegians spent around 250.000 work hours per year looking up each other in the tax databases.
There were also mobile apps being made when the databases were public that could for example show the richest people nearby.
Scandinavia may be exception from that because showing off isn't in their mentality anyway, so benefits (main of which is that more and more reliable information makes things better for economic agents) outweigh disadvantages. Not going to work well for most other countries.
I'm from the UK, where income/tax is private, and my understanding is that this is the same in the USA, and most European countries.
It's interesting that what's "normal" to me is so alien and unexpected to other people.
I'm also slightly uneasy with services like hitta.se, though I am not as paranoid as I used to be. It's possible to see the average income in some residential area as well. So if someone checks that, then checks the people living there individually, and notices that my income is significantly above average for the area, then my place is more attractive as a break-in target.
It would seem more sensible to me if that information were available given a legitimate need, such as planning to make a deal with some person.
A lot of people stopped snooping after this change.
The government should be transparent, therefore everything the government bodies do that does not obviously need to be protected should be public.
This might be more relevant with corporate taxes (where authorities make deals to keep a company in one location), subsidiaries or donations to political parties (which aim for influence)
Every single transaction. Ever. In the whole world. Recorded permanently.
It would be the fastest way to end political corruption. It would also shine some light on who the world's richest people really are, and how they make and spend their money.
Transparency for political decisions is important as is privacy.
Yes, it's true, you lose some privacy and there's weird stalking scenarios that could occur. However, on a social level, the positive mass externalities seem huge:
- Fundamentally hardcore pro-market: More information makes for better economic agents. Full stop.
- Undermine the status arms-race to display wealth.
- Immediate career education for all kids everywhere. No more "wow I didn't know x job paid y", it's all out there in the open.
- Easier to negotiate against big entities like HR as a "little guy" because you have similar info to them (which they pay for).
- Less race/sex/etc based discrimination.
- Bosses cannot ask workers to tighten their belts without also tightening their own.
- Allow people to tie vague concepts ("how are teachers valued by society?") to real, meaningful personal experiences ("George is a great teacher and making a pittance compared to Greg the salesman!")
I don't know. I'm totally into the idea. It seems like a thing that both hardcore free-market libertarians and left-wing people pining for the proletariat or w/e could both readily agree upon and promote together. The bulk of the opposition seems to be a fear of what could be done with the information, but the information is basically all out there already, in the hands of the people who already have a lot of power. Your boss drives a nicer car than you, and his boss an even nicer one. This would just let you actually do math with the numbers and calculate whether you want to shop around for jobs, rather than stay stuck with a vague impression.
This if upside down - in fact - it will reinforce class.
Do you know why your employer may ask in an interview: 'How much did you earn before'? Because they know if they offer you a little bit more than before, you'll probably take it - even if it's 'under market wages'.
Someone who earns very little can be held to that lower income, and there's also a social stigma to it: if you're a low-income earner - you will be judged as less valuable than high income earners.
People will judge the value of people by how much they earn - making it very difficult for working class people or students to move up.
Also - it's a deep transgression of human rights. Your finances are your private information, nobody should have the right to see them unless there is a case for 'public good' i.e. public officials etc.
Also - your idea of libertarian in this case is a little upside down - this is the opposite of classical liberalism. It's massive government overreach. Classical liberals would be very weary of having the government interfere in one's private life.
By your logic - your bank account, your investments, land holdings etc. etc. could feasibly be public knowledge.
All of those supposed 'good things' are intangible - there's no evidence they will happen (or are good). It's classic socialist folly: a 'do gooder idea that really is just more state control.
I have no doubt that in some cases, income could be public information - for example, state officials should have to publish certain kinds of information - especially stock ownership and business contracts so that we can ward off corruption.
But in general, we should be deferring to privacy.
There is utterly no reason why most people should not most other people's income.
Unless they are public reps, or have government dealings - or there is some kind of 'public good' - than this is basically an abuse of human rights.
Why not make people's bank account statements or health records public?
I think the one word someone from the outside should take with them about Scandinavia is "relax". Most things like these matter less than you think.
"Scandinavia tend to want to identify as a more social culture whereas others will want an individual based society."
Why do you speak for 100% of Scandinavians? How about the large portion of those who want nothing to do with this law? Shouldn't they be able to opt out? Let those who want to 'be social' (as you say it) publish their information online. The rest can have their basic rights to privacy protected.
While I agree that it's probably not a huge deal overall - it is definitely a issue of rights and privacy, and a fairly serious one.
Article 12 [1] begins "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy"
I don't agree that publishing income is a breach of human rights, but I can see how people would argue that point.
[1] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
arbitrary: "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."
EDIT: Some explanations.
- In Norway social services (Barnevernet) can take children from family without any explanation.
- Parents are under gag order, and can not talk about their case. Talking to press means you loose parental rights.
- There is no appeal, proof, or any oversight.
- Barnevernet does not release ANY details about cases. It is to protect children.
- No details are released even if child is already dead (suicide) and does not need protection.
- Bernevernet has zero oversight, it does not even allow foreign social workers to look into their materials.
- People who work for Bernevernet can also work for private companies which provide child care (unique in Europe). So person who decides on child removal may have direct financial benefit from doing so.
- Siblings are often split and placed far apart (8 hours drive).
- Removed children must speak Norwegian, mother tongue is suppressed (siblings are split). Foster parents often do not have common language with children.
- Relatives of children (grandparents, aunties, divorced parents) have zero chance to get custody.
- Anonymous surveys (parents are under gag order) indicate there are thousands of such cases (Norway is very small country). Mostly immigrants.
So if you have plans to move your familiy here, you have to adapt to our culture of child care. On the other hand, this organization will more often catch and follow-up children in homes which could be dangerous for them. In that way we can prevent that the children will have social issues when they are grown ups which is a benefit for our society as whole.
In most famous case in Czech, I believe it was real abuse. Despite that common Czech perception is that is was basically misunderstanding. In other cases I'm not so sure, but I miss lots of data.
It's also not about basic travel, but living there.
But it all comes to the rules. You live there, you must adapt. Czech are crazy when immigrants don't adapt/integrate, but they don't want to do the same abroad.
http://zpravy.idnes.cz/norsko-michalakova-soud-0w5-/domaci.a...
There have been some cases recently where children have been removed from their families, and because Norway is so big on protecting children, they don't release to the press the details of the cases.
I suspect that some of the outcry might be because of these two facts; because "of course" it's ridiculous to take children from their families because of a little physical punishment, and combined with the information vacuum, rumours and supposition take the place of fact. There will also be a strong correlation between immigrant families (from physical punishment cultures) and the application of physical punishment, which will make the stats look odd at first glance.
Norway has strict laws about children and children have rights. These laws aren't bent because one is from another culture and living here. For example, physical punishment is pretty common in the US, but it is outright illegal here. It is seen as child abuse. If you have a drug problem, you might get your children taken away until you get yourself straigtened out. Sometimes you have to have classes or observation, and sometimes your children are removed until you do so. And honestly, from what I've seen with other immigrants, so long as you are following Norwegian law with the child, there isn't a problem.
> Parents are under gag order. This is to protect the children. You see, if everyone finds out about it, they might treat the child differently or it might cause hardship or embarrass the child. And equality between kids is really important, so this sort of thing is avoided.
> There is no appeal, proof, or any oversight. This is simply untrue. It might take time to appeal, but one can. Proof is an odd thing, and if things aren't clear upfront, they will take steps to make sure that the child won't be in danger if it is true. One has avenues to get help, but one must work within the system and take the steps. I don't know how well they work with foreign social workers, but again, if it is illegal in the country, you might be out of luck. People usually are expected to follow the laws of the country they are in.
> Does not release any details about cases, to protect children... even if child is already dead. Again, to protect children. In the case that the child dies, this is truly more to protect what might be innocent parties involved.
> Siblings are often split This is not unique to Norway. Sometimes this is the only way to keep kids safe: Other times, this is done while the investigation is going on so that one child doesn't influence the others.
> Removed children must speak Norwegian, the mother tongue is suppressed. First, the kids will learn once they get school age - or earlier, if they are in kindergarden. It would be expected if they live here for an extended time because otehrwise they will be singled out. This really is just an effect of living in a foreign country. Finding safe homes with speakers of every language would be very difficult, and again. Better to find safe homes. This isn't something deliberate to harm people.
> relatives of children have zero chance to get custody. I don't know for sure, but I doubt this is true and more rumor than anything. It would depend on the situation. In some cases, there would be little chance because the relative wouldn't keep the child removed from the threat (parents), but other cases, it might be possible.
> anonymous surveys... Proof, man. Otherwise this is just rumor.
Sources are all over internet, Norway is only country with this problem, just google it.
I just told you parent is not even allowed to talk to a lawyer, if such thing happens and escalates.
Here is a czech case, women loses parental rights because she published her case. She still works in Norway kindergarten...
She has long history with lawyers, her original lawyer was removed from case (against her will), second lawyer was not even allowed on hearing...
http://zpravy.idnes.cz/norsko-michalakova-soud-0w5-/domaci.a...
Anyway, I do not live in norway, good luck.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-norway-accused-of-unfairly...
There's probably some court case about to happen to protect the rights of children because the Norwegian model is too severe.
Here's one example of international concern about the severity of the system: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36026458
Those parents hit their children, and so the parents need punishment for that bit of abuse, and the children need to be protected, but that protection should not be removal from the family because that's a significant interference with the rights of the child.
I do think with cultural differences, perhaps not enough upfront education is done - and cultural differences are part of the issue. It is difficult for parents to figure out what is and isn't allowed. However, I think the current EU/Schengen Area free movement policies probably hinder such a thing and I'm not sure how to educate a continent of people about such things.
I also realize that much like the states, most of the folks that speak out have been in some sort of trouble with them. It wasn't much different in the states - child protective services was invisible until someone had an issue with them. In general, neither place comments on ongoing cases in the protection of children.
The folks I've met that have dealt with them: One person simply had a meeting or two and a follow up, as there wasn't much to say about it. The other was having meetings in their house weekly for a bit plus some parenting classes. Both were immigrants. I know the system isn't always harsh.
And then there is the entire matter of ... well, honestly, most folks expect others to follow the laws of the country they are in. Can't very well have a different system for immigrants than citizens.