Earlier this week in a Bag of Randomness I expressed some thoughts salaries and how I would prefer if they weren’t kept so private.  Some of you had some great thoughts and brought me some fresh perspectives, and now Gordon Keith has an article that addresses the issue.  You can read the article here, but if you find it’s behind the paywall, I posted it after the jump.

We were on the patio of a pub and the sun was sinking when my buddy brought up the matter of money.

“Let’s go around the table and every guy give his salary.”

I laughed in my beer at this gathering cloud of beautiful tension. Alcohol is an idiot’s truth serum and a daredevil’s fuel. So Eric went first, then Adam. Tim paused, pregnant with info guaranteed a complicated delivery. He and Adam had the same job at the same place. Tim announced a number several thousand richer than Adam’s.

Through our braying, Adam “figured as much” and assured us that it was “no big deal.” After the flurry, our excitement curdled and the table fell into a glassy regret. It was like the morning after for new swingers. Our version of “Wouldn’t it be great if we knew how much everyone made?” somehow didn’t feel great.

Parade magazine issued its 30th annual “What People Earn” report this week. It’s full of proper names and specific dollar amounts that make me wide-eyed and shifty in my seat. Having barely survived the great Barroom Salary WikiDump of 2003, I don’t understand why people unlubricated by beer or intimacy offer up their private goods for public consumption.

Parade magazine is smart. We will never stop being obsessed with what other people make. We measure our worth in dollars. Publicly and privately. We hate to admit it because it’s shallow and doesn’t look good stitched onto throw pillows, but money remains the easiest scorekeeping. It’s clean and objective. Happiness and contentment are murky blobs. You can’t see them over a neighbor’s fence. Dollars make universal sense.

I know a guy who is one of those open parents, who raises his child with no filters. That kid can ask him anything. Did you and mommy have premarital sex? Yes. Did you ever try drugs? Yes. How much money do you make? None of your business.

Smart man. Except for the talking about premarital sex and drugs part.

My father never talked too much about money. (Or premarital sex or drugs.) The money discussions of my childhood were brief little packets of grumbles. All I knew was that stores frequently charged “an arm and a leg” and most things could be classified as either “highway robbery” or “a racket.” Every purchase brought fresh danger of “breaking the bank,” and kids kept parents perpetually “one step away from the poorhouse.” But I never knew how much my dad made. He never granted an interview to Parade magazine or had too much patio beer.

Even though we’re endlessly fascinated by the money status of others, we’re better off maintaining gray areas and avoiding hard figures. Just because we’re curious doesn’t mean we’re well-served in satisfying that curiosity. I’m curious as to what my quarterback makes, but I sure don’t like knowing it. It affects my judgment and enjoyment of the game.

When we know how much friends make, it colors the way we see them. When friends make widely different salaries, it’s a subtle cancer to their friendship. I’ve seen friends lose check-grabbing motivation when they find out a dinner companion makes more money, and pretty soon friends who used to go halfsies don’t go at all. Nothing much survives after scrutiny and perceived injustice soak into those brittle bones.

It’s best to live in the gray area of fantasized riches and plausible poverty. To your friends, you might want to appear richer than you are, but to your mechanic you might want to appear poorer. As long as there is a gray area, we can adjust our neighbor’s salary to our own liking and psychological comfort.

We’re not inherently wrong for being concerned about the score. Money is our time. Modern life demands that we trade our time for money and our money back in for time. We work hard so that someday we won’t have to. What’s sad about this setup is that we end up exchanging some major hours from our black-headed years for some minor minutes in our gray-headed ones. But balance is a hard thing to balance, especially when you’re on that financial tightrope and no future is certain.

In case you’re wondering if I answered the question on the patio that night when all bloodshot eyes swung toward me, I didn’t. I had more sense than serum so I refused and was gently ribbed for their pleasure.