I actually wasn't even thinking of the workplace. If people contribute more to the company and therefore earn more, fine. I was thinking outside of the office. E.g. a friend offering to pay for a meal when you know they can't afford it as easily as you can or vice versa.

Most government worker salaries are already public information. Everyone's property value and home/condo sale price information is already public. I don't see personal financial information moving towards being more private anytime soon.

Government worker salaries are not usual directly associated with the names of the people receiving them; the classifications are public, but you can't just type in "my neighbor salary" in Google and see what they make; you don't know what classification most government workers hold. Elected officials are the common exception to this, since we know senators make $x and we know all 100 people that are currently senators, we can look up the salary for the mayor and associate it with the mayor of the city, etc. Even then the published salaries should be seen as a baseline, since many public personas have multiple streams of income.

In California they are public and searchable by name, see http://transparentcalifornia.com/.

Who needs google: http://www.transparentnevada.com/salaries/search/

There has been plenty of pressure applied to state government to provide this information under freedom of information laws. When a local paper initially collected this information and made it available there was public backlash against both the paper, and the way certain people were compensated (mostly firefighters, police officers but also some school teachers and university employees). After a while most people forgot about it but the push continued and now we have things like the above linked site where you can find the total compensation of every employee of the state of Nevada.

How would your friend come across such a page? My friends don't browse the entirety of my website company, I actually wonder how many have actually looked at it.

Forget the co-workers, how about your neighbors, debt collectors, direct marketers. Publishing the salary of private citizens should be criminal.

"Criminal" is a bit excessive..

If my employer suddenly published salaries then it may be an issue but they've been publishing these reports for years.

I'm sure everyone who works there is both aware and accepting of the publishing. If they didn't like it, they wouldn't have accepted the job in the first place.

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I let my emotions get the better of me.