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Comment by casualrandomcom | Hacker News Reader

Actually, I don't see a scandal in this, all income should be in the public domain. In fact it is, in various contexts: public workers salaries are public in the US, in my country tax sheets are public record, you only need to identify yourself to get them.

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> all income should be in the public domain.

Would you mind sharing your passport data and income numbers here so that it becomes public domain?

Is it not obvious that one person's data being public (and the resulting information asymmetry) is a lot different than everyone's data being public?

it's not obvious, could you clarify why does it make a difference whether there are more people sharing such data with you? For instance, if I believe that open-source projects have to be released with a public domain license (effective zero license), it doesn't matter if others want to follow my example, I can still apply my beliefs onto my projects to my own percieved benefit.

This is the same argument as ”if you want higher taxes why don’t you donate money to the state?”, which is of course a non-argument.

Taxes (and thus income) is public information in several countries and they don’t appear to be Orwellian hellscapes.

> This is the same argument as ”if you want higher taxes why don’t you donate money to the state?”, which is of course a non-argument.

why is it a non-argument if everyone knows that talking the talk is different from walking the walk? Higher taxes is not a means to itself, it has a specific goal of funding causes that you care about. Now, if there's a cause that you deeply care about, why wouldn't you donate your own money towards that cause as a matter of your exercising your free will instead of desiring that everyone else are unuiformly forced into following your ideals?

Taxes and charity are two completely different things.

People can indeed donate. But arguing “I think there should be more public spending on X and I’d be willing to pay higher taxes for it” a political position.

Not sure if you are insinuating that anyone who holds this political position but does not donate money towards the cause are somehow hypocrites?

“Desiring that everyone else are forced to follow your ideals” is basically what most politics is about when it comes to public spending and taxes.

> Taxes and charity are two completely different things.

I couldn't agree more with it. One is a compulsory extortion, another is a voluntary action.

> Not sure if you are insinuating that anyone who holds this political position but does not donate money towards the cause are somehow hypocrites?

I'd like to understand why certain people would rather prefer a compulsory extortion for everyone than a voluntary action for themselves and other like-minded people. Even at the level of the mentioned politics, public spending is not especially effective and efficient approach towards funding your causes [1].

[1] https://www.thecity.nyc/2019/4/4/21211167/no-relief-as-price...

> I'd like to understand why certain people would rather prefer a compulsory extortion for everyone than a voluntary action for themselves and other like-minded people

I think if you don’t understand that already, it’s likely I can’t help you understand either. I suggest traveling to and reading about functioning welfare states and high-tax societies. Perhaps it’ll clear up. If not, reading and traveling is rarely a waste!

> I think if you don’t understand that already, it’s likely I can’t help you understand either.

But expressing your reasoning here doesn't have to be predicated purely on your percieving my capacity to understand it. You could just express it in a token of good will. I've switched three countries with three different languages so far. Coming from one of the currently non-existing Soviet states, I think I've got a pretty useful cultural and political background to understand and see the real difference between welfare- and small-government states than most of westerners by birth out there.

I'm just one data point, and I'm all for a large-ish government and high-ish taxes but I'd be happy to answer a concrete question if you have one. Was it approximately "why would anyone vote for higher taxes to fund a larger state", was that correct? You should be able to find around 50% of the people around you ready to vote for that (regardless of what the current tax level is!)!

That was my point - given that's basically the position of half the humans around you are you seriously wondering that, or is it rhetorical?

I don't know if passport data is supposed to be confidential (i.e. if it can be misused), but I have no compunctions about sharing my salary information. Last month I made the equivalent of $5615 (after deducting pension payments), from which I paid $1886 in taxes.

It's ultimately subjective what counts as "personal information", but my income is not me, nor is it particularly about me. I think it would be fine for it to be public by default, as in Norway.

> but I have no compunctions about sharing my salary information.

the difference here is that unless there's person-identifying information (which the article mentions as "personal data"), it's not yet _your_ salary information, because we don't know who you are. But if you provided a few more non-confidential details about yourself, such as the name of the company you are employed by, your role and the department, then even without disclosing your confidential details, the provided salary is a lot more valuable piece of information about you. There are numerous outsiders with a various range of intents that might find this information about your economical wellbeing extremely valuable.

My name is Troels Henriksen and I work as assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen. That is a unique combination, so it identifies me as a person. I'm not averse to my income being connected to my identity.

Nice to meet you Troels. If you don't mind, I've got a few more clarifying questions:

- Is it your only source of income?

- Do all assistant professors at your University earn the same amount of money or is it based on individually chosen fields of research / classroom hours they take?

> - Is it your only source of income?

Yes, except for a small amount of passive investment income.

> - Do all assistant professors at your University earn the same amount of money or is it based on individually chosen fields of research / classroom hours they take?

It is the same or very close. The university publishes the average salary for an assistant professor and I am pretty close. It is possible to negotiate salary on a per case basis, but my impression is that it's quite rare except for at the very top.

There's a list in the university newspaper. (It's probably on the university site somewhere.)

https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-of-university-of-copenhagen...

For sure, as soon as everybody shares his own

But can others get them ? I mean imagine I'm Youssuf Fofana (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ilan_Halimi#Gang_o...) and I decide to be smart and kidnap for ransom only high earners in a low security district to get tolerable rewards, I could optimize kidnapping to get the lowest risk/reward ratio much more easily, as I d know exactly who earns how much.

I dont mind telling people I trust my salary, but I mind telling people who want my money ...

When I was working in the public sector everyone flew off the handle when a local journalist requested all salary information and published it. Feathers flying everywhere for weeks. I loved it.

The journalist wanted everyone in this poor community to know how many six figure incomes were being doled out at the college. Very comfortable stress-free lives for people with connections while everyone serving them was basically destitute. I was making $12 an hour building software at the time.

Please someone come do this in New Orleans

I don’t want my family members asking me for money saying “I know how much you make.” I don’t want criminals targeting me knowing my income.

Could it be public just linked to role and not name? Still has issues with roles that are unique enough to be identifying though.

In the US, we have reasonably good survey information at the occupation level, see https://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm

It’s big downsides are that it’s missing information about seniority/tenure, benefits and might struggle with uncommon pay methods like stock grants. However, with other resources like Glassdoor I feel you can get a decent picture of the pay situation for a given role in the US.

There's a big difference between someone saying "I see on LinkedIn you're a Staff Software Engineer at Google and you make at least $500K" and being able to brush them off with "don't believe everything you read" and actually having government tax records in hand.

Does not sound as a healthy family dynamics.

Healthy dynamics would be: they talk about their problems and you offer your help, based on your availability. When family actually asks for money I am happy to help all the more.

I want criminals to leave me be because they know my income.

I really don't understand the criminal's point: it's like people ordinarily live in rags to hide their availability. This is not how it works, as I can see: people typically try and show off more than what they really have, why aren't they afraid of criminals?

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