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Norway, the Country Where No Salaries Are Secret (bbc.com)
In Norway, there are no such secrets. Anyone can find out how much anyone else is paid -- and it rarely causes problems. From a report: In the past, your salary was published in a book. A list of everyone's income, assets and the tax they had paid, could be found on a shelf in the public library. These days, the information is online, just a few keystrokes away. The change happened in 2001, and it had an instant impact. "It became pure entertainment for many," says Tom Staavi, a former economics editor at the national daily, VG. "At one stage you would automatically be told what your Facebook friends had earned, simply by logging on to Facebook. It was getting ridiculous." Transparency is important, Staavi says, partly because Norwegians pay high levels of income tax -- an average of 40.2 percent compared to 33.3 percent in the UK, according to Eurostat, while the EU average is just 30.1 percent. "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," he says. "We [need to] have trust and confidence in both the tax system and in the social security system."
Same thing in Finland, everyones total income is public, of course you don't nesseccary know how much you peers salaries are as, they might have additional income from through other work etc. However income from stock and other investments are show separately as they have different tax structure.
> Put in some effort and get rewarded.
Turns out, that's not how it works. Anywhere. Commonly held fallacy though.
Just as a datapoint: I earn about $54k in Norway, and I paid an effective 36% in direct taxes, plus the sales taxes (25%, 12% on food).
Entry level graduate earns around 250K NOK (Norwegian Kronor). Senior Engineer earns around 550K NOK.
Mobile smartphones are between 5000 and 6000 NOK. Mobile network connection seemed to come in two bills of about 1500NOK each. Electricity bills were split up into network/distribution and production but didn't cost more than 600NOK/quarter. Internet access costs would be subsidized by the employer. Weekly shopping is around 800NOK for one person (Meny, Rema1000) but use-by-dates were only a couple of days, as everything is imported from the rest of Europe.
There's a vehicle import duty of 25K NOK, so everyone usually ends up buying the high-end range of cars and vans - with large touchscreen at the center of the vehicle. Homes started at 250K NOK. Student places rent for 700NOK, luxury apartments 1500NOK.
You have all the catalog brand names: H&M's, Dressmann. Narvesen is the equivalent of WH Smiths and convenience stores. They stock newspapers, confectionary, magazines as well as hot food like hot dogs wrapped in bacon.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Anyone who wants to take the moral high ground based on something that happened hundreds of years ago is going to have to start their conquest from somewhere other than Europe.
The European system of government around the time of the expansions of settlement in the new world could be summed up as "steal everything you can't rape."
In fact, those douchebags who showed up and killed everyone into submission in the Americas WERE Europeans for fucks sake. It wasn't the act of stealing the land and raping the women that made them Americans. In fact, MANY of them got back on the damn boats and went back to Europe after a campaign to screw and loot their way across the old country yet again.
Now if you want to see who really gets the historical moral high ground trophy take a long hard look at no human beings whatsoever.
As the article stated, it used to be that everything was completely open and searchable on the internet for a few years, before that point you had to visit city hall (or the post office) and manually search through huge books.
The current setup is actually very nice, in that the transparency goes both ways:
In order to be allowed to access any tax records you first have to use the same two-factor authentication you would use to deliver your own tax return, and if you then look at any tax return except your own, the person you looked up will be notified that you did so.
I.e. if I think my neighbors are spending too much money and want to check what they have declared, they will immediately be told that I did so.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
The reason it's in the current news (at least on the BBC) is that the BBC have recently published the salaries of many of their top earners for the first time. The discussion has arisen because many are earning in the millions and are effectively paid from the public purse (well, licence fee but all the same in the end...).
Original article
Because secret negotiations result in a lot of highly-skilled individuals being paid less than they're actually worth, because they mistakenly think their below-average pay is average. It's exploitation by the employers.
Eat the rich.