[ademup]

"...Any other use of it is a criminal act, which endangers the social order by violating the private security of every citizen,"

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?

[matsemann]

Here in Norway all salaries are publicly searchable*. Based on my experience of this, I can't see what bad things will come of this?

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.

[ceva]

That's Norway man it cannot be compared with rest of the world. In Albania or Balkan countries it would be very dangerous to leak such and info, people could die or be kidnaped or been looked differently, normally u don't tell your salary to anyone just like that.

[azinman2]

Does this mean you know how much your neighbors make? In America that would be very taboo…

[downwithbgp]

I worked for a public university in America, therefore being a public employee. Any of my neighbors could easily go to the state website and look up my income.

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.

[matsemann]

The press will publish all the highest earners in various segments, areas etc. So in the small municipality I'm from I'm used to the salaries and net worth of all the local business owners being in the newspaper.

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..

[twodai]

This isn't a total cultural norm, if anything I think it's a view from america a few generations ago. For instance all of my friends and extended friend groups are open about our incomes.

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.

[azinman2]

We’re talking public record, which means total strangers.

[lcabral]

As a added point, the system in Norway was fully open up to a few years back. They have since changed it in a way that you need to login to lookup other people income and the person in cause then gets notified of whom looked it up. So that typically could end up in an ackward look from/towards your neighbors .

[opheliate]

As I understand it, you can also see exactly who has looked up your salary info, so it might make for some awkward conversations if your neighbour did search for you.

[BoorishBears]

That only works because Norway is a tiny homogeneous country .

(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.

[matsemann]

Could this not be a small part in maintaining a smaller socioeconomic difference? Hard to underpay someone when they know what their role should pay.

[BoorishBears]

Lol no, it couldn't for any meaningful definition of "small part" if we're being realistic.

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.

-

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...

[matsemann]

Dont "lol no" people in a discussion, behave better.

[BoorishBears]

Throwing a tantrum as soon as you don't have anything left to say...

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.

[siva7]

That would be for example considered in Germany a huge breach of the citizens privacy. Simply unimaginable if you were raised in a country like Germany or US and i certainly support this to be private data.

[matsemann]

What if the benefits outweigh the downsides? It's not black and white.

[siva7]

What benefits? If i dont want this data to be public that is my decision which should be respected. I am glad that this is also the stance of my government.

[matsemann]

Harder to hide tax avoidance if everyone knows the ballpark of what you make. If you buy a new car each year but pay nothing in taxes, it's immediately obvious.

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.

[lotsofpulp]

That is the only reason. The only parties that benefit from lack of price transparency are large buyers and sellers. In this case, large buyers of labor would be big or well funded employers, and large sellers would be people selling their labor for above average prices.

[petesergeant]

> What specific danger does this put anyone in?

Targeting by organised crime

[nisegami]

Yes. Firstly, I understand all the reasons why sharing salary information gives more power to employees. However, as someone living in a third world country with serious crime problems, sharing my salary makes me more of a target than if it were kept secret. I understand this may not be the case everywhere, but it is a reality of the part of the world I live in.

[nerdponx]

It might also open you up to various forms of discrimination, if your salary is "too high" or "too low" for some people's liking.

I think pay transparency within a single company is probably a good thing, though.

[endisneigh]

I doubt this happens - in the USA you can find the owner for virtually any property and high income areas don’t necessarily see more organized crime

[vorpalhex]

I have had individuals use my public property records in social engineering attempts. They were dumb enough to use a registered number so they knocked it off when I responded with their name and address in return, but I am sure more voracious criminals have targeted homeowners.

[jjirsa]

Targeting for home invasion

Targeting for extortion

Targeting in general

[iso1631]

On the whole you can infer the wealth of someone from the type of home, the type of car, etc, and if you're trying to get money from someone, someone with large assets is likely to be far more lucrative than someone with a large salary

[xwolfi]

Well I mean, yeah nobody will die except for the odd ransom when people can compile target lists more easily but I dont know Albania enough, just like if all health record were released. People you know would giggle a bit, then blah move on.

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.

[lettergram]

Put it in a different perspective.

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.

[systemvoltage]

Isn’t that exactly the opposite of being Orwellian? Privacy of citizens is at stake.

[Muromec]

Sharing information and knowing something you are not supposed to is indeed Orwellian. It's not the absence of privacy that defines Orwells's 1984, it's government monopoly on it and all the information flows in general.

[vizzah]

These are not just some particular profession salaries. The article says it identifies persons, their profession AND their salaries. And such list, as you could guess, is an enormous privacy breach.

[ghaff]

As others are saying, it's the norm in some places and, in the US, it's common among government employees (who have more rigid pay scales anyway). Of course, highly paid individuals including the top-compensated people at public companies and pro athletes also have public salaries.

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.

[iso1631]

Owners of captal don't take income! Simply take an negative-interest loan using your captial as collateral

Only the working class are dumb enough to pay

[NikolaNovak]

>>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?

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 )