Interesting Links for 13-01-2015

[andrewducker]

• Finally, a guide to successfully interrogating terrorists
  (tags: terrorism interrogation psychology )
• We have experienced anarchy like this before. We should not over-react to it
  (tags: liberal anarchy terrorism violence law politics )
• £300 for a job reference is the latest outrage in the exploitation of interns
  (tags: work OhForFucksSake

Comments

[octopoid_horror]

I think some of the awkwardness around salaries is because, in the UK at least, they're somewhat personal.

What I mean by that is that my salary relates directly to me - someone else in my department doing the exact same job gets a different salary because of factors like how much budget there's been in years when they've got a raise, what salary they were brought in on, whether their team as a whole did well, how long they've been with the company. The salary is related to them, not the role, in effect. What someone else in the same role earns has little impact on my salary.

I would be more comfortable if salaries were widely known, and very closely tied to the role (possibly with a % increase for length of service although I'd argue length of service doesn't really equate to skill) but bonuses of whatever kind were not public and were the more individual part of this.

Salaries being a thing that were openly discussed would also stop the unfortunate issue were some people don't know how much, or little, their friends earn. At least one friend doesn't actually seem aware that people he knows simply can't afford to do some things he absolutely takes for granted (because it's been a long time since he was on their level of salary, I assume)

[major_clanger]

I'm in the odd position of going from one extreme to the other.

When I was in the RAF, anyone could look up the date of my last promotion, look at the pay scales for RAF officer, and work out that I was being paid as, say, a squadron leader with four years' seniority. That wouldn't be exact (pay increments dated from the anniversary of my acting promotion, not the substantive promotion I got 9 months later, and it wouldn't have disclosed any additional pay or allowances I might have received for certain sorts of work) but it would have been pretty close.

I'm now self-employed, as a barrister. The only people who know what I earn are me, the billing clerk at our barristers' chambers, my accountant and my bank. It's not actually a straightforward figure, because of the accounting necessary. Let's say I earn £1,000 on a case. I will actually be paid £1,200, but £200 of that is VAT that I have to pay quarterly to HMRC (after deducting VAT on business expenses). My chambers takes £140, and I also pay a further flat fee per month on top of that. Add in other essential expenses, and I have to take £250 in total off that £1,000, leaving a taxable income of £750, so any salary comparison has to be on the basis of 3/4 of what I bill, or 62.5% of my actual VAT-inclusive receipts.

In short I've gone from anyone being able to work out quite closely what I earn to it being a figure known only to a few and which even then needs significant interpretation before it can be turned into meaningful comparative annual earnings.

I would actually favour a system as in some Scandinavian countries where everyone's tax return is a matter of public record. It would certainly be very illuminating!

[andrewducker]

I would as well. I suspect that we'd go through a transition period of people being stunned by things they didn't know, and then we'd get used to it.