Comment by Epa095
8 hours ago
Because tax is not your bill from 'government Corp ', its your contribution to the community, to your tribe. And we have explicit goals for this, besides bringing revenue (like the strongest back should carry the heaviest burden).
When we have communal contributions in other settings, your contribution is usually not a secret.
It is meant to give the tax system more legitimacy, that you don't gave to wonder if people sneak out of their contribution, you can check. It also leads to yearly debates about the tax system as the list of the richest(usually inherited) is published together with what they pay in income tax vs wealth tax.
Previously you could check up anyone anonymous. These days you have to log inn, and they get a notification. But the list of the richest and their tax contribution gets published in the newspaper.
This has also the effect of fueling envy, and allows employers to discriminate you if they see that you have side income (or if you don't). Why make all of this fuss about RGPD if private data is in the open?
And why not include medical data as well? The "tribe" has the right to know how much each one costs, right?
> why not include medical data as well?
It is usually those with little power that suffer when you do that, and those with a lot of power that suffer from financial openness. I ask this in the most naive way possible I think the Pandora Leak was a good thing, do you not agree?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers
Richer people have many ways to protect themselves from society, unlike poorer people who have to bear the envy of others and can't escape it. Just ask any homeless person.
A rich man can just (and likely should, given the comments here) leave the Swedish crab basket.
Having society obsessed with watching how their neighbor is doing is a very good way to get everyone to look away, while, in the case of Sweden, a single family owns a large part of the stock exchange.
First, lets me clarrify that I am trying to explain how this practise is justified in Norway, I am not arguing for or against it. Some of the justification is pure cultural traits, which you can try to understand even if you dont agree with them yourself. Also note that this is not completely non-controversal, but it seems like the current setup (where you need to log in to search, in addition to the public lists in the newspaper) has reasonable strong support.
Yeah, I guess the same feeling can look like both "envy" and "sense of justice", depending on where you see it from. But we can't protect everyone from their feelings.
I have never heard about this, and I don't really see the dynamic here. What definitely IS a effect is that it makes it a bit harder for employers to give employees with equal tasks very different salaries.
Because this is seen as, at least partially, public data.
No. And this is where you must just belive me when I say that this is just a truth about the cultue, most people (in Scandinavia) would not agree with argument. Your contribution is public, your weakness is private.
Let me give an example: The local kid socker team is organizing a cup, and the parrents need to help organizing, making and selling cookies, etc. This is organized through an app, where you sign up for tasks, and everyone can see what you are commiting to contribute. The same team also have an arrangement where the(small) membership fee can be waivered if you can't afford it, or you can get help buying equipment(shoes) for your kid. This is handled by you letting the trainer know in private, and he will discretely handle it.
Common citizens aren't supposed to be blockwarts judging who deserves or not their money.
> But we can't protect everyone from their feelings.
We can protect ourselves from the feeling of others by not sharing this data.
> equal tasks very different salaries
Unless you are an unqualified factory worker on a line with quantifiable output, in a service economy "equal tasks" are highly subjective.
> This is handled by you letting the trainer know in private, and he will discretely handle it.
Maybe the poor kid would rather not tell the trainer that he is poor and face paternalistic attitudes? And the rich kid wouldn't be reminded all the time that he is guilty of having richer parents? Add race/migration and you'll quickly tolerate bullying because of "social reasons".
https://nordictimes.com/the-nordics/sweden/bullying-doubled-...
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I don't follow. It allows citizenry to identify wage discrimination and other malpractices, people can get paid on the value of their work and not just how good they are at gaming the wage negotiations. Plus most of the civilised world has this thing called a "union" and "workers rights" that generally prevent your imagined scenario from happening.
What has medical data got to do with this? You can't very well go up to a disabled person and say, hey, you cost society more money, maybe you should have been born less disabled, you cost too much, pay more. Societal safety nets exist for a reason, and how much one is compensated for equal labour as your coworker... I don't see how it's related at all to the "make the disabled pay more" eugenics argument.
> It allows citizenry to identify wage discrimination and other malpractices, people can get paid on the value of their work and not just how good they are at gaming the wage negotiations.
Ah yeah, so you are for mob justice. "Value of their work" is a highly subjective topic, which everyone is an expert on, of course.
> Plus most of the civilised world has this thing called a "union" and "workers rights" that generally prevent your imagined scenario from happening.
Worker rights and unions don't prevent employers from setting wages freely with their employees. An employee with 0 revenue has much less negociating power if the employer knows about it.
> you cost too much, pay more
I'm pretty sure people can have envy about the disabled person earning as much as they do while he/she doesn't have to wake up in the morning. Or some disabled person would like to evolve freely in the society without having everyone know about it.
> eugenics argument
Sweden sterilized disabled and socially unfit people for a long time, until 2013, so yeah, I totally see it happening. Incidentally I have seen racial and social mappings made out of the Swedish public data in the past, so it's far from anecdotic.