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.
(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.
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.