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points by ErrantX 1 day ago | 0 comments

Love Freakonomics :)

That said I think Jury is still out on pay transparency mostly because there isn't that much practical data. The EU has been navigating it for a few years but research is still ongoing.

One paper (which is more focused on pay gap reporting, which is longer implemented and seems to have limited impact) suggests salary disclosure in job ads actually increases wages.

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pay-transparency-in-pro...

It's definitely obvious that internal salary transparency will a) act to normalise salaries over the long term and b) generally depress salaries. But disclosure at the job as stage is less clear.

[–] TheOtherHobbes 1 day ago

We've had decades of salary suppression already, supported by a culture of "Don't tell your coworkers what you earn." I'm not seeing how making full disclosure mandatory would generally depress salaries.

[–] trio8453 1 day ago

The people whose job it is to measure this have explained it and it's linked above - because it changes employers' incentive to negotiate and makes them more reluctant to give any raises because those raises would be visible and trigger more raises being requested. This can reduce inequality but bring the averages down (some might argue that's an acceptable tradeoff).

There's a difference between coworkers talking to each other and the system being set up in a transparent way where everyone can see everyone else's salaries, these two aren't the same thing.

[–] red-iron-pine 1 day ago

that is what bonuses are for, and can be tied to individual performance

[–] gampleman 1 day ago

Generally that's basically how socialism works: if you make things more equal, they tend to be smaller on average. Sometimes that's a reasonable trade, but it's worth acknowledging.