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I always wonder if the world would be a better or worse place if all salaries where forced to be made public by law.

Lots of pros and cons, but it would be very interesting.

I believe several countries do that. For examples:

"Norway, the country where you can see everyone's tax returns" - https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-c... .

What We Can Learn From Sweden's Public Records of Salaries" - https://theculturetrip.com/europe/sweden/articles/what-we-ca...

Many government and academic institutions do in fact publicly publish all salaries, so the question of what the effect would be is not entirely theoretical.

Here's one place that aggregates this data: https://www.openthebooks.com/ https://www.openthebooks.com/virginia-state-employees/

Governments and most education institutions are not part of the free market. Their income also does not depend on their efficiency or value they create so its not the same comparison.

yup. my salary and everyone else at my organization is published every year by the local newspaper. We aren't required to publish it ourselves, but if anyone asks, we are required to reveal it, so the local paper files a request every year and publishes it.

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