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Comment by johncolanduoni | Hacker News Reader

Could you explain more about why you think so? I think the ordering is pretty much what I want, even if I'm not necessarily happy with the absolute numbers.

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1. Government workers are your fellow citizens, and they have a right to privacy as everyone else. I don't think "how much a specific low-level government worker earns" is anybody else's business. If you are worried about government spending, you should be able to check aggregate statistics.

2. If companies can spend/earn $1B without anyone knowing, how are we going to tax them properly? If only the government knows and no one else, then we're basically asked to trust the government and corporations to be honest. When they are't, they cause much more financial harm to me (because my tax has to make up for it) than some county office giving everyone a higher raise than necessary.

I don't see how tax is a valid point. 99% of individuals and corporations do not have their spendings - that's not only the net flow, but also the breakdown of revenue and costs - revealed to the public. To imply that they might be dishonest, and that dishonesty will not be caught by the government, would mean that everybody has to release their spendings to the public. Mark Zuckerberg could be cheating on his taxes. You could be cheating on your taxes. Surely you don't want to cause financial harm to the rest of us?

With greater money comes greater power. With greater power comes greater responsibility.

Publicly traded companies already have to disclose salaries of their CEOs, but not their janitors. Same logic.

You complain about the status quo and then cite the status quo in your argument?

Yeah but publicly traded companies have to do that in an effort to protect shareholders, not the general public. The logic is very different.

By having them reveal accounting details when necessary to a government agency that keeps them confidential, just like personal taxes?

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