Transparency
I probably should go directly to Battlefish, my resource for all things Scandinavian, but this was too delicious to just go in an email. I just read about Finland’s National Jealousy Day (likely a media-created name), which falls every year in November. This is the day that the tax administration gives access to every citizen’s taxable income for that year. In the interest of absolute transparency, you can look up any person in the country and find out how much money they made.
I sort of love it. On one hand, employers are pushed to pay fairly because they know they’ll be called out for providing some people with a lower salary. On the other hand, Finland has a 16.5% gender pay gap. America has an 18.2% gap, so clearly worse, but you’d think that the pay gap would be much lower with that transparency. Regardless, the transparency means that people pay their taxes. Imagine how different our elections would be if everyone needed to make their tax information public.
Yet it also sort of makes me uncomfortable in the sense that it encourages assumptions. How many hurt feelings arise out of people judging generosity since they know the other person’s salary, even if they don’t know the person’s financial needs or the plans they have for their future? Or how many people resent their co-workers when they discover they’re being paid more, even though maybe they should be paid more for their expertise or exceptional output?
Would you look up people in the database?
13 comments
I’d probably look up the salaries of people with my job title to make sure my wages are on par. But knowing any more than that would probably make me resent capitalism and society. lol
This is interesting but not necessarily helpful…because how the information is presented can make a huge difference. People who receive hourly wages might hold several jobs or work more hours than another person doing the same thing. In my field, it’s very common for people to hold several jobs and work more than a 40 hour week overall, so knowing what they made at the end of the year wouldn’t tell me a lot about being fairly compensated. Same would go for anyone working freelance or any other non-salaried job. I also don’t really believe knowing anyone’s salary really helps because it’s not obviously doing much for the pay disparity, and really it’s no ones business how much I make (or don’t make, for that matter.)
I think, especially in the US, this would hurt more than in helps.
Oooh…wow, this is a tough one. I would definitely be unable to resist looking up my colleagues or others with similar jobs to make sure I’m not getting screwed over. And I 100% agree that wannabe elected officials should be required to show some financial transparency…but I don’t really like to idea of any person I meet being able to find that information about me, and would consider it solely voyeurism to do the same to my friends/acquaintances.
I’m pretty nosy, so I probably would look people up. 🙂
Im not sure how I feel about this – it seems like it might end up being a pissing contest. People already judge each other based on looks and perception and I feel like this might just add fuel to that fire. As you said – we have no idea about their finances or future goals… this is like if banks gave out loans based solely on income and without a thought towards expenses…just because you make $6000 per month, doesn’t mean you can afford a $2500/mo mortgage. If you have $5000/mo in bills then you CANT afford it…but at first glance, it would seem you can. This feels a lot like that.
I also wonder if this is intended to shame some? Either low income or those who haven’t done their taxes…
On the same vein, I can see this working as a benefit for that. You wouldn’t dare be late on your taxes as it would be pretty easy to see that and respond accordingly.
It’s definitely interesting and I’d be curious to see how those from Finland feel about it!
This is interesting, given that there are many wealthy individuals who are getting tax-breaks the average person hasn’t even heard of. So not only access to salary information, but tax-information. Talk about potential for leveling that playing field!
All that said, I can imagine this would also be a source of a lot of depression for many people. Knowing that your neighbors are making more money than you (or less) could be an area of discomfort. We don’t talk about money in this country as it’s considered taboo, so this would involve addressing the taboo head-on, creating quite a social experiment.
All that said, I do look at property records to get an idea of trends and dealing with disgruntled neighbors. I still remember one person arguing against sidewalk installations in the neighborhood on the grounds it would disrupt the aesthetics of the neighborhood. What she was failing to disclose was how her family had illegally installed a driveway and that installing sidewalks would not only result in fines for zoning violations but also a useless garage, resulting in the loss of property value. All disclosed from property records (and a strong case for discounting her argument).
As a state employee, my salary is published. As a union member, everyone at my place of business already knows what I make anyway. I look people up sometimes, just because I like data.
Same as a, my salary is publicly available to anybody who knows where I work. I have argued for an equity raise twice with a lot of information about colleague salaries (first time I got a 10% bump, second time they were like, let’s do a full salary study and see who else is affected, and that hasn’t been completed yet… I can’t find my original post about getting the 10% raise though I was able to find the followup post talking about how it sucked to not actually hit equity the next year).
As to whether or not making salary information publicly available actually increases equity, that is an open question. I’ve been to a bunch of talks on the topic in the past 3 years using all sorts of different methods (field experiments, natural experiments, etc.) and … it seems really mixed. For the most part it doesn’t increase equity as much as I would think it should.
That’s interesting. I think public figures, like politicians should have to disclose this information. I work in HR, I know what everyone makes where I work, and I’m woefully underpaid compared to uh, everyone in my industry? No, truly. I’ve been looking and it’s pathetic. As for friends, the ones I care about we’re all pretty open about what we make. The ones I on’t meh. It is what it is. I’m sick of taboo subjects.
Like others I’m a public employee…by law in California public employee salaries are public. There’s even a handy website transparent California…I’ve looked up people both in my and other organizations…
I’ve worked in the public sector the vast majority of my career. Having public salary ranges doesn’t completely level the playing field – – people can still get hired at different levels or different steps within an a level – – or people can get bumped a step early or promoted to a different level sooner than others—but I can’t imagine being a private employee and lacking such information when negotiating salaries.
This makes me think of early on in my career… a bunch of us who worked together were at a party together and after a few drinks we lost our inhibitions 😉 and got talking frankly about salaries. Numbers were discussed. We were shocked to learn our secretary/assistant, who had a high school education and could hardly spell, was making almost as much money as one of the others writers & I were… and another girl, who had a different job at a similar level, and a bachelor’s degree (whereas we both had master’s degrees) was making $6,000 more than we were. Needless to say, the two of us had a LONG chat with our boss on Monday morning, and we did wind up getting raises, eventually. 😉
Sometimes, publishing this kind of information has unintended consequences. Back in the 1990s, shareholder activists here in Canada pressured the six big banks (which dominate the financial services industry here) to disclose detailed information on how much its top executives were paid and the justification for those salaries… the theory being that exposing these numbers to the public would help to keep executive pay at a reasonable level. Instead, it ballooned — the boards & execs at one bank would see what the others were being paid and figure they needed to pay their guy (and it’s ALL guys, still…!) in kind, or he’d go elsewhere.
Privacy laws are different in every country, clearly! My first job was with the government, and back then the salaries and hierarchy (job levels) of every person were published. We all looked everyone else up, their ages, their rank (though we generally knew that) and their salaries. It was transparent, but caused problems. It frustrated me, for example, that junior diplomats were paid less than their secretaries. I accepted that in the first few years, the secretaries’ institutional knowledge was more valuable than a young, training diplomat, but not for a long time after that. We could see who was promoted and who wasn’t, and that made things very competitive in an already competitive organisation. They stopped publishing these “stud books” (as they were nicknamed) some years later, and when I joined another organisation, I remember noticing that I didn’t feel the same degree of competition.
I do find it weird to do on a national basis though.
I had to ask my hubby about this, as he hadn’t heard of any “jealousy day”. 😀 Although, once I explained it, he did say the word ‘envy’ could be used instead, maybe.
The tax information is available to all, all year around, it is just updated with the most current details in November.
I’ve never looked anyone up. I’m…lazy that way. 😀