It should be illegal to ask a stranger what they do for a living, or how much they make.
It is of vital importance for unionizing to be able to exchange information with strangers about your salary. Making that illegal (as apparently the case in some US states) is just playing into the hands of capitalists.
If you are worried about the “dinner-party social stigma” thing, then you need to think a bit about just how privileged of a situation that is. No offense meant :)
imo talking to fellow workers about how much the boss is paying, and a random stranger asking me what I do for a living while i’m just trying to buy glasses are two totally different things.
edit: also i should add that my trade is one that liberals have really strong opinions against (i was called a “baby killer” once for even just hinting at working with firearms) and I’m really fuckin’ sick of having to dance around the question when random people I’ve never seen before in my life randomly ask, even though there’s absolutely no reason for them to need to know. Once I was in the line at a walmart, a carton of eggs in hand, and an old lady came up to me and started asking me a fucktonne of weirdly specific questions. I’d really like if that was in some way prohibited behaviour, because fuck it feels like it should be.
Obviously no-one is forced to answer such questions from random strangers (and at least personally I have never experienced people asking such questions out of the blue), but it isn’t just about co-workers as you need to be able to freely exchange salary information across companies and also different economic sectors to make an informed decision where to work.
It is of vital importance for unionizing to be able to exchange information with strangers about your salary. Making that illegal (as apparently the case in some US states) is just playing into the hands of capitalists.
If you are worried about the “dinner-party social stigma” thing, then you need to think a bit about just how privileged of a situation that is. No offense meant :)
imo talking to fellow workers about how much the boss is paying, and a random stranger asking me what I do for a living while i’m just trying to buy glasses are two totally different things.
edit: also i should add that my trade is one that liberals have really strong opinions against (i was called a “baby killer” once for even just hinting at working with firearms) and I’m really fuckin’ sick of having to dance around the question when random people I’ve never seen before in my life randomly ask, even though there’s absolutely no reason for them to need to know. Once I was in the line at a walmart, a carton of eggs in hand, and an old lady came up to me and started asking me a fucktonne of weirdly specific questions. I’d really like if that was in some way prohibited behaviour, because fuck it feels like it should be.
Obviously no-one is forced to answer such questions from random strangers (and at least personally I have never experienced people asking such questions out of the blue), but it isn’t just about co-workers as you need to be able to freely exchange salary information across companies and also different economic sectors to make an informed decision where to work.