You pay taxes to the government on those imaginary private deals, right? I think mostly the salary thing is about feeling awkward rather than it being about privacy.

Why does your salary deserve to be kept private? I'm trying to think of a reason that isn't some people feel awkward about it being open? If salaries are open I think that would go away and people would be more free to talk about money.

Finally in almost every company I have worked in everyone tries to work out what everyone else is on to better negotiate their own salaries, it just makes it difficult to mention...

I can see scenarios where you have someone in your extended family/friends who constantly attempts to leech money off you because they know you have it. This is something people who win the lottery often face which is why (in the UK) they can choose not to make their win public.

More fundamentally, you pay taxes on your private deal with your employer but the government is just a third party involved in that transaction, the same as your bank. Neither the government nor your bank makes the amounts of tax you pay or what you earn public, them knowing doesn't really impact your privacy in any meaningful way. I don't quite understand how you've got from "well the government knows what you earn so everyone should!".

I don't consider that something being a "societal good" automatically overrides peoples right to privacy, different people will consider different things to be private, many would consider that my personal medical data would be better off open to the public in fine detail as it would help medical research but this is generally not the case (in the UK at least) and neither should it be.

Why should how many times you have intercourse per week be kept private? I'm trying to think of a reason that isn't some people feel awkward about it being open? If how many times you have intercourse per week is open I think that would go away and people would be more free to talk about their sex life.

See how it goes? You could literally use the same argument for any privacy concern ever.

It's about 4 on average.

However, this isn't the same thing and there is no benefits for other people knowing that I can think of; there may be lots of benefits for knowing everyone's salary.

> there is no benefit for knowing

I just gave you a benefit, people being more open about their sex life could be a good thing for society. Should we force people to tell how many time they have intercourse then based on your logic?

Ok, so all benefits are equal, and all drawbacks are equal? We as a society can't do anything that's not beneficial to absolutely everyone?

I posit that a few things are not that harmful to make public, except in some cases that varies for each individual (like being in a witness protection program) if someone already has the means to identify you as you (such as a full name). Some of those things would be your address, what vehicles you own, wether or not you have stock in corporations, wether or not you're married, your age, your level of education and some other things. I don't see how the knowledge about these things can be used to blackmail you through social stigma, unless you did something illegal. I have the same feeling towards pay checks.

The discussion is wether or not pay checks are too private to disclose publicly, not if it's ok to release everything about everyone.

Not true, you could make it a tort instead of a law, where employees can sue for punitive damages if secret negotiations have occurred. No guns necessary.

> No guns necessary.

Really? A tort will get you a fine, refuse to pay it and they will send you to jail, resist your arrest and they will use their guns. No way around that.

Not every attempt at "resisting" the force of law results in being shot.

You're stretching the concept of the monopoly on violence and the "men with guns" metaphor to absurdity, when the "violence" in that context involves all compulsory interactions with the state, including mere arrest and detainment, or even having to buy postage stamps to send a letter.

This isn't really how it works, we don't have debtors prisons. If you don't pay a civil judgement against you then the debtholder gets permission to garnish your wages and bank accounts or seizure your assets. If you have no wages, bank accounts, or assets the judgement doesn't get paid.

What if I say "No, you can't seize my assets and I refuse to go to jail"?

It could be argued that income inequality is a much greater source of problems for society.

Not really. Wealth inequality is a problem. Income inequality not so much. Whether someone makes $100k a year, or $500k, or even $5M a year is irrelevant. In the grand scheme of things, even $500m is pocket change.

The problem is with major wealth holders, e.g. people or families with assets in excess of say $1bn, who generate disproportionate gains when held to the effort they put in.

Making $50m a year with $1bn isn't hard. I can do that. But those people don't spend that $50m in extra gains. It accumulates. And you get a massive snowball effect.

Compound interest is great and a pillar of capitalism, but past a certain point it can get problematic.

In Norway and the rest of Scandinavia (Swedish here) you get data on all the income, even capital gains. Even some benefits that you have to pay taxes on is included here.

The capital gains can be offshored, so it won't be in Scandinavia and the ones benefiting wouldn't pay taxes there but rather small change in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands. People with lots of wealth are used to this or they can definitely afford to pay someone who is.

Relevant parts of the government also know what my healthcare status is, but that doesn't mean I'm particularly keen to make it readily discoverable and benchmarkable by anyone and everyone that might wish to profit from this information.

Hacker News might just be the only place where you can see howls with rage at the thought of recruiters and HR asking them their salary in their current job with the obvious intention of not offering much more than that and arguments that this information should be accessible to everyone without question in nice little searchable databases anyway...

because of the disparity, not the information itself. if you (and everyone else applying for the job) give that info to a recruiter, the recruiter has and can act on all the info, but everyone else only has their one bit.

What use is the additional information when the employer offers you your existing salary plus 10% when they were willing to pay more?

Looks completely out of context. Undisclosed income is black money. You pay taxes on salary/income (most of which is deducted at source). The state does and will almost always know your salary/income, period.

Even the most determined defenders of taxes usually concede that they have downsides. It's entirely reasonable to propose limits on what the State should do with tax information. As a hyperbolic (but real) example, the State also usually has access to single transactions from your friendly neighborhood sex shop.

But that does not address why the government should then broadcast that information. Obviously an income tax requires the government to know your salary, but why should it become a public record?

That's not a bad argument. I still think that its more beneficial to make transactions as public as possible, though.

Think about real estate. I think it is immensely helpful for the public to have access to the sale price of houses. Imagine if the only people who had this information were a handful of real estate agencies. An individual buyer would have to go by a few scattered, probably inaccurate, whispered anecdotes. People who aren't part of an inside crowd would be at a terrible disadvantage in negotiations.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much how it goes for salary negotiations.

Also - the two consenting adults who contract privately you've mentioned, where do they turn if the deal goes south? If they feel one side has broken the contract, perhaps tortiously? Certainly, enforcement of contracts, to an extent, is within the realm of the state. I'd avoid too much tinkering, but a few ground rules to ensure an open, competitive, and, yes, transparent market, seems very reasonable to me, and very consistent with the concept of lightweight government.

In fact, I think transparency might take care of a lot of things the government tries to manage at a more granular level downstream.

In real estate, the public are the buyers.

In job hunting, the employers are the buyers.

The State knows as thats how they calculate your taxes.

Upvote...I don't see why that should be public. It ruins the incentive to work harder as I bet companies are far more likely to pay everyone the same [no sources on that].

there is one real life example why your argument is as wrong as possible.

professors in the UC system have public salaries, like any other public employee, and it isn't a linear communist apocalypse for salaries like you think. prof still work hard to move and create departments, etc. and the salaries vary wildly, not just with seniority.

...on the other hand, senate and congress does prove your point. ironically with people elected spewing the same liberal pipe dreams against the very way they get paid and accumulate retirements.

> professors in the UC system have public salaries

Professors have public salaries because their salaries are paid by the public. I don't think anyone here is arguing against being able to know how much your employees make, that's kind of a given.

If you own a business, you don't think you should be able to pay each employee whatever you want as long as above minimum wage? Besides taxes, I'm not sure how that's anyone's business besides the employer & employee.

It actually increases the incentive to work harder - http://www.businessinsider.com/why-companies-have-open-salar...