I'd prefer to keep my finances private, thanks. No good can come from nosey-ass family members, scammers, sales people, etc knowing this kind of information.

It doesn't fight against tax evasion or anything, because the wealthy of the world will have yet another incentive to mask their income / assets through any of the number of mechanisms currently available.

If you want pay transparency to fight pay inequality, then anonymized pay based on role / job title should suffice.

Any legitimate need for such information can either be obtained through asking, or through the courts. At least then, I have a say in the matter and a right to defend myself in cases where I believe it necessary.

People are entitled to privacy. I wouldn't want random people knowing my salary anymore than I'd want them knowing what medications I take.

> If you want pay transparency to fight pay inequality, then anonymized pay based on role / job title should suffice.

It does not suffice.

We mostly do have this data in the US and wealth inequality keeps deepening.

The only purpose of the salary taboo is to keep rich people rich.

> The only purpose of the salary taboo is to keep rich people rich.

While it is part of the motivation, calling it the only purpose is just hilariously wrong, completely lacks any nuance/empathy, and a single case of something existing outside of the "only purpose" statement proves it wrong immediately.

My brother ex-communicated my dad because he wouldn't stop hounding him for money. My brother became wealthy at a young age, and made the unfortunate mistake of divulging his finances to my narcissistic father. My father made terrible financial decisions in his life and subsists entirely on social security. He also bragged routinely about cheating on my mom, who got the courage to pull us out of that situation when we were kids. Any extra money I have would go to my mom, not my piece of crap dad.

I can't imagine how terrible it would be if he simply knew how much money I make.

Your dad is a product of the salary taboo. The salary taboo creates a weird societal emphasis that associates a person's worth to their income, hence to certain kinds of narcissism.

I mean, maybe you're right. But also, parent probably knows his Dad a bit better than you, so maybe you shouldn't assume that some kind of generic statement about society for sure applies to other people?

This is the "lacking in nuance" thing that parent was talking about.

The really rich are not so because of the salaries they draw, if any.

Salary transparency can help individuals by revealing their unfair pay relative to their peers. Correcting such injustices are not big money overall, they're not going to create meaningful wealth distribution, it's not going to make the rich noticeably less rich.

The rich people are the ones giving lower salaries, thanks to the salary taboo, while also hiding their own income, also thanks to the salary taboo.

I can imagine a society that doesn't value privacy functioning much better than ours if the lack of privacy is somehow thoroughly universalized. Secrets allow for concentration of power, something we should avoid.

That being said I'm well aware of how load bearing "somehow thoroughly universalized" is in my statement. Perhaps it's only possible in a culture that truly rejects secret keeping as deeply harmful from an individual level up. I don't believe we can get there from here anytime soon, and if we tried it would just be another system for the people who figure out how to keep secrets to exploit that info asymmetry. In a world of cooperating actors though . . . yeah, I know I'm dreaming.

> Secrets allow for concentration of power, something we should avoid.

Why should we avoid it? Oh, I know a few arguments and they're compelling in abstract but are inevitably just arguments towards a reshuffling of who or what has power. Power over another, however you want to define it, is inherent in hierarchical structures, and I am sorry to say but hierarchies - that is, rankings of entities - are one of the most fundamental aspects of all known existence. How many electrons do you have?

I get where you're coming from. We should avoid concentration of power in human societies because this always (at least so far) leads to abuse of that power.

However, reality exists.

I'm not saying: By whatever means necessary we should enforce flatness of power.

Hierarchies are unavoidable and useful.

I'm more making the argument that cultural disgust at concentration of power, and a general erring on the side of flatness whenever we can would go a long way toward a healthier society.

I want personal privacy. I want privacy in my use of services. Privacy in where I go, at least to a reasonable degree. (Something to discuss, just not this thread.)

All law, court cases, contracts, and legally binding agreements being public? I could be convinced that's a good idea. Bright sunlight from all angles would revel inequity and could allow better civic planning and civil action (voting).

I think the line should be drawn a little in favor of being private, and in favor of hiding non-recurring purchases for personal use. It would be more harmful than good to reveal where and when someone gets food, takes a vacation, etc.

There is no freedom without privacy, full stop.

Surely that depends. If there was a database where you could lookup the eye color of anybody, would freedom be significantly impacted?

I imagine that publishing everybodies income would not have a significant impact on freedom even if some people would prefer to keep that data private.

Depends if you have the right Aryan eye color when the ethnic cleansing squads come round or not.

In that scenario I think the freedom was lost when the ethnic cleansing squads were formed, not when the database became available.

But it enables it read about how Nazis's used IBM punch card systems to help round up Jews

Its also covered in the:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 12)

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 17)

I don't live in Norway but OP didn't seem to suffer from second order consequences of divulging income. Maybe culture can be a factor here too.

Norway has a very flat distribution of income. This means that most people don't need to worry about others knowing their income, it is more or less the same for everyone.

I imagine that this policy also helps with keeping the flat distribution, since people will know when someone is making more money and will request similar salary increases.

You say that, but in 2014 they introduced protections that made it impossible to search the database anonymously. People are now informed who has accessed their information, when, and are provided information about the searcher in question, such as birth year and postal codes. Also, a person is only allowed to see a limited number of people's returns.

skatteentaten.no also lists a bunch of other privacy restrictions that they have in place.

This was, in part, to discourage criminals using the database to target wealthy people, and to curtail some of the harassment that resulted from this information being brought to light. This change apparently was a enough to dissuade the majority of usage, as most people now apparently just search for themselves.

ah.. social dynamics are so strange.

Thanks for the data though.

Imagine not trusting your family with knowing how much you earn.

Uncle celticninja: "But celticninja you make so much money and I'm on a fixed income, can't you just loan me some, remember when I got you that hot wheel when you were six?"

I told my dad what I made, he messed up and told my mom, my mom told her brother and now this guy I haven't seen in a couple of decades is begging me for money.

He showed up at my house once to beg and then got mad because he had spent the last of his money on gas to drive to my house to ask for money.

Tell the guy that your dad and mom are rich, and eventually become soft touches if someone is really persistent about asking them for money. :|

So tell him no

This is what I don’t get - lots of people resist just saying no. If you’re well off financially and someone refuses to hear your answer then you’re in a proper position to exile family members. The only thing stopping you from exiling them is yourself.

Cut toxic people out of your life!

Not everyone is blessed with a loving and supportive family, unfortunately. Surely you know this?

My family is, perhaps "interesting", so it's not hard to imagine at all. Just cause they're blood doesn't mean they're good.

Imagine assuming everyone has good relations with his family... I have good relations with mine and I'd still not trust anyone outside my parents/sibling with that info.

Imagine being this ignorant about people.

I agree with the others here. unfortunately for a lot of people it is not something they have to imagine. I don't support the down votes though. I think your comment brings an important issue front and center.

There are tons of dysfunctional families in the world. The US just had one in the Executive branch. Don't you think Mary Trump probably has good reason to not want Donald knowing her income?

Different cultures. My family don't know how much I earn, and vice versa. Why do they require this information? It can be quite rude in some places to ask someone how much they earn.

it's probably more current than you would think...

It's so easy to imagine this. Have you spent any time browsing https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ ? - and that's just the first example that jumps to mind.

https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/ is even more relevant than that.

Must be nice to assume it's difficult for people to imagine. Are you a minor? There are many people without trusting families...

You're getting a bunch of replies about different interpretations of the "American Dream" - interpretations that are not at all consistent with either the mainstream concept or the historical one.

Typically the "American Dream" has been centrally about freedom of opportunity, independent of social class or circumstances of birth, and the resulting possibility for upward social mobility through hard work (e.g. America as the Land of Opportunity). I think it's quite hard to argue that the United States is a leader in this category in the same way that it was 50 or 100 years ago.

Who would be in first here?

As an aside (mostly to add some perspective around Scandinavian comments), my Swedish friend moved to America and became a citizen exactly for this version of the American dream. As far as he's concerned, it's FAR more difficult to become wealthy in Sweden.

Well, the main issue here is social mobility - most importantly escaping poverty and becoming middle class (and also not falling back into poverty), not just becoming wealthy. As has been stated elsewhere in these comments, there is enormous selection bias regarding those that choose to immigrate to the US from other developed countries in an effort to "become wealthy."

With this in mind, generally speaking the US does not do particularly well on social mobility in relation to most other developed country, this includes the Scandinavian countries, the other anglophone countries, and western/central European countries... And, honestly, it really should surprise no one that social programs (including things like high quality public/affordable education and universal healthcare) improve social mobility for the poorer half of society.

What business is it of yours what other people are paid? I can't begin to understand why you would want to know, still less why you think you have a right to know.

The irony here is that the true American Dream is less oversight, less governance, less laws, less restraint, and more freedom/trust. Most Americans just want to live and let live.

> Most Americans just want to live and let live.

As long as certain other people are never near them. It’s really not a live and let live kind of place.

A good portion of the United States is against any sort of identification system in general. It’s why voting is so complicated. Some kind open income system in unfathomable to the vast majority of Americans.

Which is pretty ridiculous given that everyone needs a social security number, and then if you ever want to rent or buy a place you need a credit score. Then if you want to travel abroad you need a passport. And if you use google, social media or a cell phone, or pretty much just anything online, you are going to get tracked. All of these systems and organizations have already identified you, or they’ll easily do it when needed.

Not having a universal-nation-wide identification system only makes it worse for everyone.

It is pretty annoying -- to sign on to the IRS's system you pretty much need an existing debt to some private company (student loans [but not NELNET!], credit card, mortgage, etc). Apparently we can't have a government run identification service so we have to hack one out of random information from private companies.

SSNs are issued at birth, not at first draw of credit.

SSN is insufficient to get full access to the IRS online account system. Which kinda makes sense given how many data breaches have happened, but it is still annoying.

So are a lot of things that the rest of the world do, but the rest of the world keep on doing them and they work just fine.

Almost like the issue isn't the 'thing' being done, but the people.

Almost like humans will endure and do anything to just be left alone to live their lives. Just because it "works just fine" doesn't mean it's what people want, nor does it mean that it's the ideal for that set of humans. Hey, here's a thought, let people pick if they want their salary public and attached to them.

I always heard that salary data was available in Norway but high end streamers are probably running these funds through a corporation. Does Norway have essentially open books for firms?

For Finland capital income is included in public data. As such doesn't really matter if it is paid as dividends or wage. Ofc, if you hold it in it is bit more complicated, but even then some data can be gotten.

Getting a persons private salary is slightly more arduous thank looking at the income of companies.

That can easily be found on a site like proff.no

From my perspective, in American culture very few people are mature enough to handle discussing income without feeling a hugely inflated ego or completely inferior to their peers. (Maybe true elsewhere but I can't speak to those places!) The reason it's kept secret is because people can't help but turn it into the proverbial dick measuring or whatever is a more polite way of putting it.

As for the American Dream, it still strikes me as integral the American Dream, I think you just have a different idea of how you wish it was.

EDIT: Also from what I've heard anecdotally, Americans are actually more open about money than most other countries, especially Scandinavian ones.

I don't think it's really fair to reduce it to dick measuring when there's just a ridiculously enormous class divide.

All my friends have STEM or business degrees and I'm pretty sure I make 2-6x more than every one of them because I work at a top paying software company. I don't want to talk about that.

The notion that you earn 6 times more than your peers is also absurd. You dont work 6 times as hard/much and your time isn't 6 times more valuable than your friends. In my ideal world everyone made the same amount of money since we are all equal. Then you would get your software degree to avoid collecting garbage or wiping old people in a nursery home. Now think of CEO's making 100x other people

Why? I probably do produce more than 6 times value. Their work only impacts one individual customer at a time whereas mine scales to over a billion customers.

They can retrain and join my megacorp if they want reducing the supply for their job and increasing it for mine which should theoretically reduce the pay gap.

I have a communist buddy who runs a profit pool with like 4 other people where they share an office doing different (often unrelated) work and combine/evenly distribute all of their income/paychecks.

Ever since meeting him, I'm automatically skeptical that most people are just reciting platitudes without much real belief behind it.

The dicks will mostly be compared within classes, if at all. It’s not going to be decamillionaires and thousandaires comparing notes on the golf course.

Or both. It can be both.

American culture is really broad.

I don't see the immaturity angle. I think lots of folks become envious and it creates hostility, but envy shouldn't be written off as immaturity.

In some cultures in the USA, money issues are kept private. And even among the cultures where it isn't, individuals may be comfortable sharing it themselves but not with others sharing it, or it being broadcast to the world.

I imagine if some information like that was available... it would just come and go like nothing happened for most Americans.

Some spats here or there, and the typical social media outrage, but nothing significant.

Plenty of information out there about who makes how much and it doesn't really matter.

I’d be absolutely willing to bet your average American would not classify giving up their right to privacy as part of the American dream.

> In countries like Norway, that kind of data is publicly available.

Many things make sense for a largely homogenous nation of 5.5 million that stop making sense for a largely heterogenous nation of 330 million.

I've heard people from the US use this term for too many things.

The "but we're different" narrative doesn't suffice.

Scandinavia, while not exactly a nightmare, seems like the opposite of the American dream to me.

In Scandinavia, you have the radical lack of privacy you just mentioned as a feature (!!!) as well as eye-watering taxes.

Now, in the States, the government spies on you, but at least they don’t publish their findings.

If everyone is paying the same taxes, this suddenly is not a problem! It really is a problem only when some people pay a lot of taxes and others pay close to nothing.

Does Norway have a regressive tax system?

You mean like how the top 10% pays 71% of the taxes and the bottom 10% are net receivers of government money?

That seems like it lands in the distribution ballpark the comment above was referring to, yes. The poorest 10% not paying very much in taxes is a feature of the system. And assuming your figures are correct, that 71% might look like a lot until you consider that the marginal tax rate for the very rich is very, very low in the United States compared to other developed countries, or even the United States prior to the Reagan administration.

By what logic does that imply that the States should raise taxes on the rich?

The States are doing so much better than the rest of the world economically that we should follow the American example, not vice versa.

China is also doing so much better than the rest of the world economically, should we adopt their system?

Are they? It's not the best metric but China's GDP (PPP) Per Capita is about $16,400.

Contrast this with the US at $60,235.73 and Germany at about $51,000.

I might have said yes if China did anywhere close to as well as the States or even Europe.

It implies that there's way, way too much wealth in the top 10% if the bottom 90% is only supplying 29% of the tax revenue.

I don't think too many people, at least in other developed countries, are looking at the United States and thinking "wow, I wish my country was more like the United States." Usually such comparisons are made to the Scandinavian countries.

A statement like “too much wealth in population group x” can only come from someone with utopian ideas about how society “ought” to be structured, especially since population group x seems to be the source of this wealth.

What moral system informed these utopian ideas? Why does everyone have an obligation to subscribe to it?

If the rest of the world wants to hand arbitrary taxation power to some bureaucrats in pursuit of their moral ideal, let them have at it.

> population group x seems to be the source of this wealth

Here's a fun thought experiment - if Jeff Bezos (actually Andy Jassy nowadays, but that just proves my point further) suddenly vanished, how many orders would fail to be delivered tomorrow as a result? Literally none. Now suppose everybody else working at Amazon disappeared instead. What happens? The company ceases to meaningfully exist. So who really created that wealth?

Actually, the answer to your question is 100% of packages will be missing.

Jeff Bezos (and I’m no fan) the hungry entrepreneur only went through the massive life disruption of starting a company because of the possibility that he might one day become Jeff Bezos the (m/b)illionaire.

Take that juicy end state away and suddenly you’ll have nobody willing to go through the decades of hell it takes to create these big companies.

Resulting in no jobs and no packages.

> nobody willing to go through the decades of hell

Nonsense, Jeff Bozos has never been through "hell", since he only started Amazon with the help of venture capital. It was more work than a normal job, yes, but was not torture nor even something he disliked doing.

What alternative is there to utopian ideas? Status quo? It's not working for most people anymore. I'm not saying we should radically change society, but if Jeff Bezos and Amazon aren't paying taxes, there is something wrong and it should be fixed.

It IS working for most people. Beautifully so. Just look at some graphs showing essentially any economic metric from almost any nation for the past 100 or even 20 years. Chances are, it’s not only heading in the right direction, but at an exponential rate.

Regarding ideals: they’re usually great to have personally, but not so great anymore if others have to pay for your grand visions.

Regarding Bezos and Amazon: of course they have to pay tax, everyone should. But my sense is that taxes are far higher than they need to be - there’s an entire class of unionized middle-class bureacrats and government suppliers that add uncertain value at best.

A lot of people make the marginal taxes prior to Reagan argument but seem to dismiss, either through lack of knowledge or purposeful removal, the fact that prior to Reagan there were an incredible array of tax loopholes that lowered the effective tax rate, regardless of the stated tax rate.

The effective tax rate for the highest earners right now is not all that different than it was from the 50's to the 90's.

The thing that's changed is actually the effective rate on the bottom 50% - those taxes have increased.

I'll take your word for it (I'm in the lack of knowledge camp), but I don't see this as an argument for not raising the marginal (and if we do it right, effective) tax rate on the very wealthy.

It's not. It's a counter to the justification of 'we did it before.' We didn't, not really. If you want to raise the marginal tax rate now, it needs to have its own justification independent of historical marginal rates since it's not an apples to apples comparison.

Point taken!

On other hand we have other sorts of privacy. Like secrecy of correspondence meaning that for example my employer can't look at my mail without extremely good reason. Even with my employer my emails are mine and only mine.

While that is a very good thing, I'll take lower taxes over that any day. Every 1% of taxes you save compounds mightily over a lifetime's stock market investing.

Full disclosure: I live in neither Scandinavia nor the States.

Out of curiosity, how difficult is it to migrate to Scandinavia as an American? I've long felt the ideals i cherish as an American are just not the ideals of America. Maybe America isn't wrong, i'm just not American. I want:

A country which values it's citizens health and happiness in measurable, quantifiable ways.

A country which ensures it's citizens can be educated and follow their passions to financial success.

A country which allows even poor citizens to take risks like opening a business or going to school _(if you can call that a risk)_ without going into crippling debt or becoming homeless if you fail.

A country where a health emergency won't leave middle class workers in crippling debt.

A country where a job is enough to ensure you can have a roof over your head and food on the table.

Scandinavia may or may not match all of those, but that's not my point - it feels to me Americans don't want this. To me Americans value "freedom" (as ephemeral as that may be) and low taxes so heavily that the above items are nearly irrelevant if they conflict with that.

This isn't a dig at America, rather i'm simply saying maybe i need to stop voting so "lefty" and find some place more inline with myself?

While I think Scandinavia might be ideal, one need not limit oneself to only those countries. Essentially all other developed nations are noticeably better at providing the things you've listed to the majority of their citizens than the United States.

If you can easily migrate to Scandinavia from America, then you are almost certainly a well educated, talented, wealthy American who will not be subject to any of the vagaries of life that poor Americans may need to deal with. Healthcare, education, housing, and lifestyle are all top notch for the set of Americans that can easily emigrate to other first-world countries.

In fact, you will find that it is much more common for people with high levels of education or marketable skills to migrate to the US, versus those people migrating from the US to whatever country.

> If you can easily migrate to Scandinavia from America, then you are almost certainly a well educated, talented, wealthy American who will not be subject to any of the vagaries of life that poor Americans may need to deal with. Healthcare, education, housing, and lifestyle are all top notch for the set of Americans that can easily emigrate to other first-world countries.

I maybe am. No formal education, but self taught and we live very comfortably.

However this isn't about "me". I want a country that feels like it's trying to do better for all. America seems very selfish to me. I want to aid and support a government that actively works towards the bullet points i mentioned, not against.

You know, it's pretty eye opening, to see that many streamers make millions in just a few months, while it would take me more than 50 years of constant work in my country to make a single million. Though looking at the top earners is probably very demoralizing if you don't also see the median and average figures, which i'm curious to see.

Someone actually did a writeup of some of their personal findings, though i'm sure that we'll see more in the following weeks: https://sizeof.cat/post/twitch-leaks/

Of course, i can also understand that those with a lot of money probably don't want others to know how much they make, while those that are making less money sometimes don't want to be confronted with the truth because it's so depressing. Regardless, if nothing else, it's educational to see things like these and have them become a piece of humanity's history.

> In countries like Norway, that kind of data is publicly available. It makes for less second-guessing and less suspiciousness.

It might work in Norway where there is basically zero violent crime, but in many parts of the world outing yourself as a millionaire is a great way to get yourself or your family kidnapped.

I'm not sure it should matter / I should have access to whatever financial transactions take place between someone and twitch and their audience...

Generally I'd respect those folks rights to have that info remain private. They can always share if they want.

>In countries like Norway, that kind of data is publicly available. It makes for less second-guessing and less suspiciousness.

Given that one strategy for businesses is to optimize monetary intake by tailoring prices to how much specific customers can pay and often this tailoring is facilitated by stuff like checking if you are using an iphone or an android phone etc. etc. - if you use your name and address to login to a service and you are from Norway could they look up how much money you make and more precisely tailor their prices for what you are able to pay?

If so, boy, that letting people know exactly how much money you have thing is great.

> In countries like Norway, that kind of data is publicly available. It makes for less second-guessing and less suspiciousness.

That just means the very rich need more creative accountants.

"See I don't own the jet, per se, I just own a majority of shares in a corporation headquartered in Cyprus that owns said asset"

> It always struck me as weird that the American Dream can best be lived in Scandinavia

I don't think the American Dream is really compatible with Janteloven

https://www.lifeinnorway.net/what-exactly-is-janteloven/

I think that takes a fundamentally different society than the US to work. There are many many have-nots in the US and public knowledge like this would put legitimate threat of harm on many people.

The UK forces private companies to share some high level financial information publicly on Companies House. As a non-UK company, I can spy on my UK competitors' finances while they cannot spy on mine. Insanity.

And given how the average person experiences jealousy, I wouldn't want salaries to be public. I already feel uncomfortable when family members ask me how much money I make, because I know they'd only use it to compare themselves to. This kind of comparison is toxic in society.

> This kind of comparison is toxic in society.

I would imagine that the change, especially overnight, would be quite toxic. But given enough time for the population to adapt, maybe it wouldn't be a problem anymore? Just like it (supposedly) isn't in Norway?

Why do you need to know how much money a random streamer makes?

I wonder how pay transparency impacts the variance of job-to-job and industry-to-industry pay. If you hear that you can make a bunch more by changing jobs, you're more likely to, forcing the industry to keep up and pay more. Does more pay transparency reduct some kind of "friction" in the market reaching equilibrium?

The American Dream of being a busybody bothering themselves with the finances of others.

Privacy is, contrary to much discourse particular on HN or the tech circles in general, primarily a tool for the powerful. (this is why crypto-anything has always interested libertarians moire than everyone else, they correctly recognize that it is a tool to escape (fiscal) authority).

Transparency and expansion of the public sphere generally has equalizing effects, expansion of the private sphere the opposite. This is I think relevant in particular for people in the US who seek to emulate Scandinavia, because they ironically seem to be some of the biggest opponents to anything that conjures up notions of 'surveillance'.

> It always struck me as weird that the American Dream can best be lived in Scandinavia

It should strike you as weird, because that's false.

The American Dream can be best lived by Scandinavians in the US. Scandinavians do better in the US than they do in Scandinavia and that has been true for the past century. Among the US population, people from Scandinavia and or of Scandinavian descent produce exceptional outcomes.

Comparing primary demographics to primary demographics, white Americans are richer than white Scandinavians at both the median and average. They have higher incomes and greater wealth. And Scandinavians in the US are far richer than Scandinavians in Scandinavia, at both the median and average.

If Scandinavia is so great, how come their people do so much better here and always have? Scandinavian culture + the US system = vastly superior outcome.

> And Scandinavians in the US are far richer than Scandinavians in Scandinavia, at both the median and average.

The Scandinavians immigrating to the US are not a random sampling of Scandinavians. Getting a visa to live in the US usually requires a high-paying job. Usually of high skill or of exceptional talent. Basically the US work visa system selects for the cream of the crop.

Yes but OP also says that the average white American (vast majority born in-country) does better than the average white Scandinavian.

Aside from the sampling bias of "Scandinavians who chose to emigrate to America", I'm unconvinced that "greater wealth" is the only metric for "american dream"

The same is true if you look at Somali refugee families which spilt up and go to both Sweden and the US. The US branch of the families integrate faster, earn more, attain higher levels of education, and have fewer encounters with law enforcement. The last point should really surprise many Americans.

Interestingly, Minneapolis, where virtually all Somali-Americans live has strong Scandinavian roots.

It is hard to compare the two, since a Scandinavian emigrating to the US is an outlier in that they have the resources to do so.