I hear this in a deep and booming Orwellian voice. What specific danger does this put anyone in? I certainly can see the owners of capital being upset when their workers find out how egregious the disparity of income is, but outside of that?
If anything, hidden salaries only benefit employers, as they have all the knowledge.
* you can know everyone's taxable income and net worth. What deductions people have, other incomes etc aren't separated, so it's not an exact number.
Frankly, I never felt that to be an issue. It was also nice to have that transparency in the workplace, all of my colleagues knew exactly how much any of us made.
In addition one can online search for whoever you want. Later years, one has to log in to check, and then the other person can see who have viewed their information. This has probably cooled it a bit. But can just get someone else to check for you..
With complete total strangers I would totally agree people generally don't lead with their salary. But after knowing people for a while it's come up a bunch and it's a taboo.
It can help lessen pay gaps. Between genders or other groups. Removes the power from the employers when you know what you should make.
Makes it easy to see if someone is making loads of money while underpaying their employees.
(yes I know some Norwegian will angrily reply about how that's false, I have plenty family that emigrated there from West Africa but let's be real... if the US is the melting pot, Norway is the slightly warm shot glass.)
Add in large amounts of diversity, not just in terms of race but also in terms of socioeconomics and suddenly it doesn't work.
We're not talking about examining a black box here, you can just look at Norway's socioeconomic history and realize is not because they share salaries.
Not mismanaging profit from massive natural oil reserves, tiny relative population to all their resources (not just oil), and having a largely homogeneous population that valued education and social benefit.
All such major factors that sharing salary can't really be considered a meaningful data point.
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It's more an effect of their situation than the opposite, they can still share salaries because things went so well, and the idea is to catch people who are abusing the tax collection system.
A quick search shows that while you could theoretically get someone's salary historically, it wasn't until the early 2000s it was made easy (presumably by making a standardized digital system)
Then in 2014 they added alerting to know who looked which resulted in a 90% drop in inquiries...
If I had left it at "lol no" (it was a funny point just looking at the country you're talking about...) at least I could see why you're upset.
But instead I still proceeded to break down why you're wrong in quite a detailed manner and school you a bit on the topic so you can go forward with a better informed view of the country.
The customary reply there isn't a tantrum, it's a "thank you" or a "that's interesting for me to learn". Some people really do forget how to behave the moment another person doesn't agree with them.
But fine, thank you for schooling me in arrogance.
Targeting by organised crime
Targeting for extortion
Targeting in general
I think pay transparency within a single company is probably a good thing, though.
However, it's still quite infuriating. First, salary comparison are usually irational and lead to toxic jealousy more than social justice: I think it's not right to do that without at least public consultation and you should not defend it as "not a big deal". It is.
If a highly skilled and more valuable employee is making 2x his or her peers then this type of disclosure reduces the companies ability to retain said employee.
For instance, now everyone will demand a raise and the company will potentially have to lay off some employees to ensure a higher salary and same profit.
Alternatively, the most qualified people may leave. There are times where smaller companies may pay much higher for the right people in the right positions.
So it's not really some deep dark secret. That said, if a bunch of big companies in a place where public salaries aren't the norm decided to make everyone's salary public one day, you'd have a huge amount of blowback and it would be followed by a whole lot of internal gripes from people who think they should be making more than "Joe" is.
Only the working class are dumb enough to pay
There is this idealistic belief that knowing salary will make all people better off. I also find it laughable the notion that "owners of capital" will be the only ones upset, as opposed to 50+% of us who merely have somebody that makes more money, or the other 50% of us who now have a painted target (not necessarily just for simple physical theft; but also resentment and social consequences).
I may be a cynic in my old age, but I don't see easy mandatory connecting dots between "Share salary information" "Step ???" "Everybody Profit!".
I have not yet met a single person in my life - friend, family, acquaintance, colleague, team member, boss, personal nemesis, whoever -- that openly and with full self-awareness says "yes, I'm not very good; I don't work very hard; I should be getting paid less than this other person".
What I see day in and day out is everybody wanting the best of everything. And fair enough! It would be irrational to desire less for yourself and your family.
So if you have 10 people and they're on a bell curve in performance and happen to be on a perfectly matching bell curve in salary, if anybody here believes that open salary information will result in 10 out of those 10 people being happy and satisfied with their situation... well, I want to join you in your fantasy world of unicorns and rainbows. In reality, 9 people would want to have the same salary as your top performer, while not being willing or able (but primarily willing) to invest effort, work, ownership, responsibility... and eventually the other top performer quitting too as they were harassed, resented, bullied at work. Eventually you'll settle in an equilibrium with mediocre performers getting same mediocre salary. But this seeming "equality" is not necessarily the idealistic optimal point it may seem.
I won't go as far as to say this is human nature. This may just be cultural artifact and conditioning in parts of the world I've lived in. Perhaps there exist cultures where people have more self-awareness and satisfaction with "their lot in life", i.e. their effort/reward ratio; and more allowances and comfort that others make more or less. I can 100% see Iain Banks' Culture operating differently:). Maybe there are enlightened countries where this is already the case... I have yet to live in Scandinavia :P. But not where I'm standing.
(I may be slightly grouchy today... but I stand by the gist of the statement :P )