I think of how people are striving hard in my country and even other parts of the world, to make money and make ends meet. I remember the battle with minimum wage here, which was an unbearable situation for many till around a year ago when it was approved after being revisited for a long time. I look at all these and consider what the prompt presents; should people's salaries and earnings be made public?
What could look like an interesting point and argument for the need to make everyone's salaries and earnings public is that it could encourage transparency and help curtail and arrest the issue of money gotten through illegal means. Well, I don't think that holds water because if we're considering this kind of money, it doesn't go through the proper channel, it doesn't get to the receiver through salary.
Even in the case of say other kinds of earnings, it still goes through some separate, private channel, protected in the best way possible. I also think this approach will be a failed one as it won't be all-inclusive. I don't know how people who do business and other non-salary work could be included, given that the channels of salary payment have nothing to do with them, hence no way to have their financial gain displayed.
Maybe if such businesses or enterprises run solely on transactions, then there might be a way to have them included. But many of the businesses; the little to medium ones, the shops, provision stores, the market sellers, mostly do transactions with fiscal cash. So, I don't know how the system will manage this. But beyond all that even, why should someone's hard-earned salary or earnings be made public?
Not even in a country where there's serious insecurity and exposing your account balance can put you in a place you don't want to be. Let's also consider friends and families who know this might end up disturbing and pressuring and would never believe when one says that they don't have money to give because they've seen the earnings. When something like this is made public, it leaves people vulnerable to some unsuspected situations. It takes away privacy.
There's a high possibility of undermining one's work and labour. What do I mean? We currently live in a world where many people worship money and every one of their values, reasoning and arguments is built on money. Imagine then that someone who doesn't make that much has their earnings or salaries exposed to the public and this is used to make a jest of them or counter them in discussions. Ridiculous, right? But that's the world we're in today.
If the need to identify those who are into illegal means to gain money is very much necessary to consider this system, I would say that rather, a separate and focused effort on that area and matter be made, because this way of putting people's earnings in public isn't the way to go. And this will be another oppression of the common man. Those at the top who control things and the very ones this should work against will find a way to conceal their true earnings.
