[tekalon]

A bit nitpicky on one portion over an otherwise good analogy. If they library is funded by a city, the list of employees and their salaries are public knowledge. I use to work for a small town library in high school. I could see all of my high school teacher/staff information along with co-workers and any other town staff salaries in the town record (publicly displayed in the library itself). Of course, what you may do with the information is another thing.

[lolwutf]

OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS.

[jlgreco]

Enjoy: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2012

[tekalon]

I thought it was funny itself. It did make one teacher uncomfortable -When the class was pestering them about salary,I mentioned the information was available publicly to the class (not that any of them would have gone to check). It does have its uses. Their salary is paid for by taxes. People want to know what their taxes are paying for (especially since education in the town was debated hotly for different reasons).

[PhasmaFelis]

I have heard that America's bizarre obsession with keeping your salary secret is not shared by rest of the world. I haven't checked myself, though.

I'm deeply suspicious of the "tradition" either way since working at a place where it was actually a policy violation to tell a coworker what your salary was. Because then they would know if they were getting stiffed, and they might ask a raise.

[jlgreco]

I have friends who make somewhere in the general neighborhood of several times less than I do, and other friends who make likely as much as twice what I do.

The result of having a wide range of salaries in your social circles is that salary becomes taboo. There is little good to come of talking about it with non-coworker friends, somebody is just going to end up feeling bad, or jealous, or self-conscious, or asked for a personal loan... Even more closely guarded than salary is personal worth, for many of the same reasons, and more.

If this taboo doesn't exist outside the US (and I rather doubt claims that it really doesn't), I would nevertheless refuse to participate in non-anonymized discussions about salary in those settings. What good could come of it?

This taboo carries over to the workplace and into interactions between coworkers who arguably could benefit from discussing salary. If it were born just from employee handbook rules, then nobody would respect it. There are plenty of other rules in those things that nobody reads.