Actually, I worked for a the UC system where all salaries were made public in an easily searchable database. The sky didn't fall.

My only real problem with it is that I feel it puts the UC system at an unfair disadvantage. Imagine if you could look up salaries for your competitor's workers, but they couldn't look up yours? This is essentially the situation for UC relative to a lot of private universities, even though massive amounts of government funding flow into private universities (with a tax exemption on endowment growth, too).

I actually think that all companies that make use government subsidies program should be required to disclose employee salaries the same way that state government do. And I absolutely do think that the H1B program should count as a government subsidy (Milton Friedman recognized it as a subsidy, because it was changing the rules for only a certain segment of the economy).

Overall, I actually think it would be beneficial to publish all salaries, and I really don't think it would cause the kind of problems people worry about. It would also real even the playing field between employers and employees.

Think about it this way - all real estate transactions are made public. But imagine if you were bidding on a house, but only the real estate agents actually knew what every house in your neighborhood had sold for. You were forced to go by little bits of gossip here and there. You'd be at a terrible disadvantage!

I worked for the State of Virginia a some years ago, and at least two years running the local paper did a FOIA request for everyone's salaries and then published anyone earning above the median in a searchable database. ( http://www.richmond.com/data-center/salaries-virginia-state-... )

Many of my coworkers were upset, but the only real practical result I saw was that some people that were underpaid relative to their peers had evidence of it, and those that were overpaid relative to their peers were held to more responsibilities by others.

On the whole my experience was positive with it. (That said, your point that we have varying levels of "justice" is completely valid).

My wife used to work at a public university and their salaries were publicly available on the university website.

You could literally search "EMPLOYEE NAME salary" on their site and find any employee's annual income.

In Nordic countries tax records are public so you can check anyone's income if you know the name and birth date.

Public employees salaries are public records in the US. Many local news publications will publish a searchable list.

Of course, hypocrisy runs rampant for this community. Privacy is important... as long as it's our privacy, not their privacy.

This not an 'immigrant' thing, it is a H1B requirement. When I initially began working in the US under Trad NAFTA there was no such requirement, but when I changed to a permanent track the job had to be posted. It is part of the process to prove that there is not a qualified person already available to fill the position. The whole underlying proposition of H1B is there is a shortage, disclosing the salary is just part of the process of proving it, which falls to the company making the petition. Really, I never gave it a second thought.

It would be a step in the right direction.

Well, I suppose that if the employer and employee couldn't normally work together but had entered into a special arrangement with the government dictating (among other things) that their salary be made public in exchange for being able to employ/be employed, I'd be just fine with it.

The situation is not remotely analogous.