Rick Scott is fixing FLorida, slowly.

[faethor]

Dammy -- While I agree an open government is good. I think this might work in the business world too?

Afterall dollars you and I pay to private businesses are what is making up their salaries. And how about say industies that receive large Federal dollars, eg Oil and Gas.

It might be interesting if ANY government spending came with the demand that all employee salaries from any vendor receiving gov. money might be displayed as well. As our tax dollars paid are paying those privates too.

 

[redrumloa]

If making salaries public in for public employees should lead to a more rational pay scale then surely the same thing applies to the private sector. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Bzzt, wrong but thanks for playing! There is a reason government employees are the "public sector", because they are public servants paid for by taxpayer money. This is the law and should stay the law. If people don't like it, go work in the private sector.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

No, public sector is being paid by my tax dollars. I'm not forced to cough up money for private sector (until Obamacare)

Prisons? Munitions? Oh yes you are, but it's all been "arms length"-ed away so that you now no longer have the right to find out how much money is being wasted. That's part of the reason that governments privatize things - the money then goes into a black hole that is impenetrable to the auditors and kick-backs and perks can flow without trace.

it's none of my business what private company pays it's employees. The dollars that I am forced to pay to the government, makes it my business on what those employees of the government are making.

And if they hire private businesses with your tax dollars?
And maybe when you have a buying decision to make it might help you decide how you'd rather spend your money if you knew a private businesses internals. Since we are all consumers, imagine if we could see inside of companies and reward them or punish them with our pocket books the way that we apparently have the right to do but currently don't have the means.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Bzzt, wrong but thanks for playing!

You are answering on an emotional level. If opening up information will lead to efficiency then it will work for the private sector too. The invisible hand of the market actually assumes such information efficiency because without it you get market distortion. Of course, private companies WANT market distortion because that's how they can make big money. In a perfect information system things would be perfectly efficient and everybody would be perfectly breaking even all the time.
However, the reason you don't want the same play for private companies is because you don't want to have your salary google-able. Public sector people feel the same way - it is considered private. When you go out to socialize do you ask people what they make? In most social venues it's one of the things people avoid talking about.
But, if it IS legitimate then it is also legitimate to ask for the full internal finances of any private company that takes a government contract.