Why is talking about your income such a taboo in the US today?

[Withywindle]

I've been thinking about this all night.


I know so many people who will talk in great garrulous detail about their sex lives, their politics, the gory details of their medical conditions, their childhood abuse experiences, etcetera. And yet, the simple fact of talking about MONEY, including basic numbers like annual income before taxes, is treated as the ultimate taboo.

I think this reluctance to talk about MONEY - how much do we make? How much do we have? What are our worries about money? How do they feed into issues about our self-esteem?--is a pretty big issue for everyone in the 99%, and yet it's still an elephant in the room. Why can't we talk about this face to face, as humans? The taboo on talking about numbers straight up is in no way good for anyone in the working classes. Silence and social awkwardness on this issue has prevailed for so long that many workers spent 20, 30 years at a company without ever knowing that, for example, maler/whiter/younger etc co-workers were getting paid more for the same (or less) work.

[Sherman A1]

1. It has been for a very long time

this didn't happen overnight. In my particular case I work in a Union shop and we pretty much know what everyone makes, so there is no real discussion of income as it's already well known. You may not know exactly how many hours a person got last week or were they are on the wage progression ladder, but it's not all that important most of the time.

As for the salaried types (management) we do know that their pay is at least based in part upon what we make and again it doesn't make all that much difference.

[Withywindle]

2. I know it didn't happen overnight.

I know it's been like this for a long time. Hell, I had no clue what my parents made for most of my life until my mom (who's been retired for years) gave me their 70s/80s figures (the years when I was a kid) under the influence of several caiprinhas.

I know it's a taboo. I just think that nowadays, it's a harmful taboo that needs to be challenged and brought down.

Back when talking about sex was taboo, the overwhelming effect of that honest-talk ban was to cover up a lot of rape and incest and domestic violence and sexual abuse, and it also normalized homophobia. The taboo on honest, nitty-gritty discussion of that subject only served to silence the unprivileged, in a very insidious way: if you thought you weren't "normal" in any way, you didn't even have to be forcibly silenced; the internalized shame would do all the work.


I'm not trying to force anyone to talk about anything they're not comfortable with--but I DO want to question why this taboo exists, and most importantly, who does it serve and who does it hurt?

[FBaggins]

3. There's nothing wrong with discussing your income

but first you must come to the understanding (and believe that the people you are speaking to have the same understanding) that income is not the measure of a man. Since that understanding is less common than we would like, we don't generally talk about income.

Never judge a man by the size of what he keeps in his pants.