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."

Comments

is 40% high

[TheCarp]

I mean I know we Americans like to pretend to have low taxes, but, in reality, we just have a lot of misdirection and backdoor taxes.

Every fee you pay for a government service, especially the ones they impose on you like driver's licenses which need to be renewed for some reason and the same with car registrations. Then they setup their regulations to maximize offences so they can disproportionately rake in money from the poor. Those fines are all taxes really.

40%? That isn't far off from some estimates I have seen for totals of what a lot of Americans give our worthless government.

Re:is 40% high

[jedidiah]

Actually being a small business is very advantageous. While "rates" may be high, you can deduct pretty much anything. This is in stark contrast to an individual wage earner that has to bear nearly 100% of work related costs.

Corporate tax rates even for small businesses are only relevant to profits after all expenses including wages.

Even lush bennies for low paid employees can be seen as a tax dodge for the business owner.

It's already been stated

[nehumanuscrede]

But it would go a long way in calling bullshit on an employer who tells you no on a payraise because " budgets are tight " all the while paying each of their execs a yearly bonus that exceeds your lifetime income.

This sort of transparency would cause a great deal of discomfort for those companies who regularly lie to their employees.

In fact, those companies would find it difficult to keep any employees and, in the end, might have difficulty being a company at all when all of their talent leaves because of it.

The Income Inequality gap in the US is so wide now, this level of transparency would likely cause a great deal of anger at best.

An insane amount of violence at worst.

Re:2001?

[thegarbz]

It's still news to Americans that the world doesn't implode simply because someone knows how much you get paid, or why you went to see the doctor last week.