[crusso]

It would be an interesting experiment. Has it been done before? That could lead to some unpleasant things:

    * A lot of unavoidable angst as people of less worth to the business are proven to be paid less in no uncertain terms.
    * More internal strife as people jockey for identifiable rank within the organization based upon their salaries.  "Why is Sue paid $10k more than I am?  Sue wasn't at her desk all week last week while I was here busting my butt."
    * Eventually, many managers and organizations would just sidestep the battle by paying everyone the same thing based upon easy-to-identify metrics like seniority.  As a result, the people with more value to the business will find jobs at companies that pay them according to a better measure of their bottom-line worth.  With no one left but the lowest-common-denominator employees, the company flounders and fails.

[majormajor]

> Eventually, many managers and organizations would just sidestep the battle by paying everyone the same thing based upon easy-to-identify metrics like seniority. As a result, the people with more value to the business will find jobs at companies that pay them according to a better measure of their bottom-line worth. With no one left but the lowest-common-denominator employees, the company flounders and fails.

In most fields, there are already companies which pay wildly different amounts for the same jobs, so the people contributing more in those similar roles are already highly incentivized to leave for higher-paying pastures.

[fyi1183]

In certain Nordic countries (Sweden at least, I believe), all tax data is public. By extension, everybody's income is public as well. It doesn't seem to be an issue.

[crusso]

A quick Google turned up some refutation of your statement:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9907147

Looking further, it appears that Sweden has decreased the amount of transparency by requiring that people make specific requests that notify the taxpayer of the request.

http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-salaries-freely-availa...

Apparently, there were issues. I'd like to see this experiment run for a longer period of time in more culturally diverse environments, though.