Given that the government already knows, and either your employer or your accountant knows, and your bank has a pretty good idea, why do you think your income is to any meaningful extent still private?
You ever listen to a friend, who has recently hit a rough patch, talking about their difficulty paying their bills and think "gee, this would be a rather inappropriate time to mention how much money I make."?
That is where the desire for wage privacy comes from for me. Talking about how much you make, outside the workplace, has no benefits. It is just going to make the conversation awkward, or somebody is going to feel bad about themselves, or somebody is going to get an irritating spark of envy where none needed to exist. As far as I am concerned, you may as well publicize dick length.
(Public employees opt-in to the public knowing how much they make. The reason the public gets to know in that case is because the public is paying that salary. There is an employee/employer relationship there.)
I think public employees to the public knowing how much a particular job/role at a particular location on the salary ladder at a particular agency. But unless they share their particular role/ladder location with friends, I don't think they are opting into sharing their exact salary; only their salary range.
The people that I know who work for the federal government simply say "I'm a mathematician at NASA", not "I'm a GS-13, Step 4 mathematician and BTW, I got a bonus of X last year."
Note my emphasis in this snippet of my comment: "Talking about how much you make, outside the workplace,..."
Discussing wages with your employers/colleagues has advantages, and without it collective bargaining is difficult to impossible. However coworkers account for a slight fraction of those that most people interact with.
There is no utility in me (someone who works in tech) telling my brother (who works in aerospace) how much I make, and vice versa.
Personally, I wouldn't want it shared with the world. The people/organizations you have listed are somewhat trusted entities.
Income data can be used for a slew of criminal activity. I wonder if you can correlate the release of the data with burglaries or other crimes spiking in the relatively wealthier households, compared to their neighbors.
It's a risk but it seems likely to only be a problem in places where there are significant variations in income: if you live in a neighborhood where the average house costs $500K, your hypothetical burglar is going to assume that they're all good targets – or they'll just go to the house with a Mercedes in the driveway.
Your neighbor knows how much you make? Everyone you've listed has a need to know, that doesn't mean that everyone has a need to know.
Your doctor knows, your parents know and your insurance company probably knows, but does that mean you broadcast to the world that you have a third testicle?
That is where the desire for wage privacy comes from for me. Talking about how much you make, outside the workplace, has no benefits. It is just going to make the conversation awkward, or somebody is going to feel bad about themselves, or somebody is going to get an irritating spark of envy where none needed to exist. As far as I am concerned, you may as well publicize dick length.
(Public employees opt-in to the public knowing how much they make. The reason the public gets to know in that case is because the public is paying that salary. There is an employee/employer relationship there.)