Norway, where no salaries are secret

Why keep this stuff secret? Because <i>none</i> of it is fair and we all know it. None of it can be. &quot;We needed person X in January and couldn&#x27;t wait until march so we promised them more money to come accross.&quot; So you should piss off everyone else by rubbing it in their face that X was pretty lucky on timing? Or give everyone a raise the company can&#x27;t afford? Or force person Y to have a horrible conversation with their spouse who cares more about money than Y does because they now know X gets more? Or have Z&#x27;s pyschotic parent hassling them because they want a cut of money they didn&#x27;t know was there until publication. You can imagine hundreds of other situation like this that are horrible consequences that you 100% know will happen to someone.<p>Privacy is quite unfashionable nowadays. The fashionable idea that nobody else should get it because it doesn&#x27;t suit you is pretty ugly. It used to be quite an admirable thing to be wealthy and have nobody know you were.

Back when the lists were completely open and could be searched on multiple different media sites without logging in, I would sometimes look up people out of curiosity.<p>Since it was put behind a government 2-factor login page I&#x27;ve honestly never bothered.<p>I think it&#x27;s pretty cool that this information is open, but I&#x27;m not sure if it has any significant impact. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s a nice tool for investigative journalism, but what else?

Am I the only one who thinks it&#x27;s my own business how much I earn as long as I don&#x27;t do anything illegal? What&#x27;s next, a database with all guys dick size?

I think in Germany a large part why Salaries are secret is because most people don&#x27;t want to think about it. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Why-is-everything-so-cheap-in-Germany" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Why-is-everything-so-cheap-in-Germany</a>

This is one of the things I want to see in the rest of Europe too. Still hope that we&#x27;ll see a EU wide tax and commerce union leading into a unified system that includes the best from every EU member.<p>Also liking the sentiment that people want to have some kind of confirmation that everyone pays a similar level of taxes :-)

Of course salaries shouldn&#x27;t be secret - everything like this should be in the open and you should be able to talk directly to your boss about contributions to the company that you have made over and above those who are earning more than you. This also helps when in most societies women are paid substantially and illegally less than men for the same job.<p>This prudish idea of not wanting to talk about money is not a good enough one to stop people from being able to value themselves against their peers. After an initial period of concern everyone would eventually stop worrying about this system as disparities were corrected and fairer wages were introduced.<p>Is there a reason not to have open salary information?

&gt;&gt; &quot;When you pay that much you have to know that everyone else is doing it, and you have to know that the money goes to something reasonable,&quot; he says.<p>That&#x27;s an interesting justification. It&#x27;s like the Norwegian government wants people to focus on making sure their neighbors are getting just as hosed as they are instead of asking why they have to pay a 40% income tax.<p>Also, how does making everyone&#x27;s salary public prove to taxpayers that their money is going to something reasonable? That doesn&#x27;t follow at all.

We have it in Sweden, too. I think you pay 50 kr (6 dollars) to look up somebody&#x27;s declared income - anonymously. There&#x27;s a website for this: www.kollainkomst.se (check incomes)

We have the same thing in Finland. Only you can&#x27;t access the info easily online, you have to go to the tax office and use their terminal. But there you can stalk your neighbors and friends anonymously.<p>Although newspapers publish lists of all people earning 150k&#x2F;year and make a big thing about the income of celebrities.<p>What I haven&#x27;t understood is if tax records are public why aren&#x27;t social security payments etc. also public? So you could see who possibly &quot;games&quot; the system in benefits?<p>I mean if the point of public tax data is to be &quot;open&quot; (=have everybody snitching for the government).

Not sure about publishing income and assets, but publishing everyone&#x27;s tax bills could help stigmatise aggressive tax avoidance.

This definitely blocks divide and conquer from working for employers.

A system like this encourages others to compare salaries and make judgements about oneself related to how well one is doing compared to someone else. This creates unhappyness because some feel they work harder and shouldn&#x27;t be paid a quarter less. The person getting the extra amount feels they are more successful than there peers. All this does is distract you from the fact that both of you are making only a few dollars above minimum wage. If you only look at total pay in relation to your needs you will accept and be proud of your wage.<p>I have seen people who love there job find out someone they feel does not measure up to them make more money. This causes them to start hating the role they once loved and in some cases they left for the same salary elsewhere.

The result of this and other policies in Scandinavia is that everyone makes just about the same amount of money in a given line of work. Raises are based almost exclusively on age and seniority, not on performance. What a depressing and demotivating system.

Transparency is enormous factor in the quality of life of all of us, and I think real transparency is not about public information, but public knowledge.

Another problem with this is that it stigmatises (and in the long term will prevent) those with no wealth and a high income. I think it&#x27;s madness but a more fair trade would at least be to also publish everyone&#x27;s existing wealth. I make an ok income for the minute but am not going to inherit millions in property like most people I know.<p>Wealth is a much bigger problem than income for society.

My company, GrantTree, has completely transparent salaries since day 1, almost 7 years ago. We are about 35 people now. #ama

This doesn&#x27;t change much, I guess.<p>I mean, if you see marked rate for a JavaScript dev is too low, just don&#x27;t sell yourself as one. Be a &quot;mobile app dev&quot; or a &quot;solution engineer&quot; etc. pp.<p>In the end you do the same work and get paid more, because people stop judging you by skill A bit skill B.

Not so much salaries, as declared gross incomes and wealth.<p>Salaries are dealt with via bi-yearly negotiations between unions and business representatives.<p>Note btw that there is no minimum wage legislation in Norway. Instead the agreement formed during negotiations apply not just to union members but to the business sector as a whole.

There seem to be a lot of commenters in favour of open salaries here - how does this work for self-employed people? If I&#x27;ve been freelancing and working my tail off do you also believe I ought to be publicly disclosing that, or is it limited to employees of companies?

Possible due to social mobility <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.pn...</a>

This is <i>amazing</i> for small advertisers. Anyone&#x27;s salary can be found online, for free, and it&#x27;s easy to target high earners with ads or even direct sales teams.<p>It&#x27;s not so great for the high earners, though...

I think janteloven also plays a part here, although I am not sure which part....<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_Jante" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_Jante</a>

A question for all the people who use the word &quot;fair&quot;:<p>Do you mean fair as paid<p>- by productivity,<p>- by necessity,<p>- paid equally, or<p>- something else?

Ah Norway, home of the Teslas. I remember the tax lists were always public in Norway, however before the Internet became commonplace actual physical effort was required - you had to go to the city council to look through the books.<p>The change to publish the lists online was creepy. I&#x27;m glad I left before my own numbers were made public (IIRC).<p>In Australia the difference between the rich and the poor feels a lot less pronounced. It helps not to actually know your mates might earn 3x what you do.<p>This is just this Norwegian expat&#x27;s personal experience; YMMV.<p>(Edit: I see from other comments here that the information has been ID-locked. That&#x27;s a good thing, if but a bit late - after at least a decade fully open).

Well, I assume this only considers base salary. But for some occupations commissions, bonuses, etc. can be a significant part of their paycheck.

Funny how some people stopped searching once you could no longer do it anonymously.

So, where is the graph of distribution of incomes?

Wow, surprised I&#x27;d never heard of this.

Does anyone have a link to the search tool?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_Jante" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_Jante</a><p>...specifically, &#x27;the penal code of Jante...&#x27;