What if you knew your neighbor’s pay?

Last updated on: November 7, 2017 at 8:49 am by Jane the Actuary

What if you knew your neighbor’s pay? 2017-11-05T22:29:02-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Apparently, this is a thing in Scandinavia. According to The Economist,

SWEDES discuss their incomes with a frankness that would horrify Britons or Americans. They have little reason to be coy; in Sweden you can learn a stranger’s salary simply by ringing the tax authorities and asking. . . . In 2001, tax records in Norway were put online, allowing anyone to see easily what other Norwegians had earned and paid in tax. . . . Even Nordic governments continue to tweak their policies: in 2014 Norway banned anonymous searching of its tax database, so citizens could see who had nosed around their finances.

Isn’t this a mindblowingly-bizarre concept?

Sure, I can understand the notion that employers would pay everyone fairly if they knew that it was open information. And government employees generally are paid according to published payscales. If I know how many years my schoolteacher-neighbor has been teaching, and how much education past the bachelor’s she has, I could go online and look up her salary. But everyone?

Now, you could say, “that just wouldn’t be something that decent people would do.” But you can visualize all manner of scenarios.

Your neighbor has a tree with a branch over the lot line. The tree is old and you’re worried that is could be felled in the next storm and damage your roof, and you want your neighbor to get the tree removed, but he claims he doesn’t have the money to hire a tree-removal company. You want to know if he’s being honest or not.

Or, likewise, your neighbor’s son broke your window while playing baseball. Again, they claim poverty.

Or your brother says, “gee, we’d love to help with Mom & Dad’s home health care, or visit more often, but we just can’t afford it.”

Or your sister builds an expensive addition onto their house, and you want to know if they’re managing their money wisely or not.

Or your kids complain because all their friends go to Disney for spring break, and you’re second-guessing your financial decisions: are you being more frugal than those families, or do they all earn more than you, so that it’s perfectly reasonable for them to go to Disney while you go to grandma’s?

Would you refrain from pulling up their tax records, if you could do so anonymously? If you’re in a dispute, would you do so even if your name would be provided to the other person?

And how would you feel about the idea that anyone could find out your own pay? Anyone, including a sibling who might decree that, since you’ve got so much money, you don’t need to inherit any of Mom & Dad’s money. Or including a community group looking to hit people up for donations. Or a prospective employer who wants to know how much pay you have any right to expect.

I could continue to list examples, but you get the idea. Readers, can you wrap your head around this any better than I can?

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMoney_Cash.jpg; By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Yes, I have one generic “cash” image.

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