Making Salaries Public?

There was a fairly silly Op-Ed column "Show Us the Money" in today's New York Times, arguing that it is in the public interest that salaries be made public, and giving the Supreme Court as an example. Here is a letter to the editor I sent in response.

The author seems unable to distinguish between private corporations and publicly funded entities such as the Supreme Court, where salaries are not based on merit. Now it is true that in publicly traded companies, the salaries of the top officials are public knowledge, but do we want all salaries to be public? A lot of organizations use a "grade" or "rank" system, and usually one's grade or rank is known by fellow employees. School teachers are sometimes paid by a matrix method: If you have this or that degree, and if you have worked this or that many years, then your salary is X. This is totally transparent, but based more on longevity than on merit. If it is unfair to pay two people different salaries for the same job, do we now want to add humiliation into the mix by making this fact public? There must be better and more confidential remedies for this problem.