I am not afraid of being judged. I am judged pretty favorably all the time. I just do not wish to invite unnecessary social awkwardness, requests to borrow money, etc.
I am not particularly wealthy, but I do well enough to find what I have vaguely embarrassing. So to be honest, I would just rather not talk about it in detail.
My salary is $84,949.062. There – I feel like I’ve broken the last taboo in American society. It is a little weird, isn’t it, that people take advantage of the quasi-anonymity of this board to tell about their sex lives and preferences in such exhaustive detail, and yet shut up when it comes to how much they make.
Most of us don’t do that, either.
Brother, can you spare a dime? 
And yet I think it’s the case that more people here are willing to talk about their sex habits than their finances. Though I’ll be the first to admit, the former is a lot more interesting than the latter.
Oh, we don’t need specifics here. If you have enough to be vaguely embarrassed about it, you have enough to give me a loan.
C’mon maaaaannnnnn, who’s more trustworthy out of all these people you don’t really know than me? I totally need, just like, y’know, maybe 10 grand. I’ll pay you back, I swear. I’ve got a total lock on a race in, like, two weeks. Or three, something like that. But it’s coming up soon and it’s a sure thing! I just need a little seed money, y’know. And maybe a little to tide me over. You’ll get it back, I promise! With interest! Unless, y’know, the horse breaks a leg or something. Hah, hah! But shoot, you could afford it anyway!
As I’ve mentioned before, I work in a different society, the land of the GOVERNMENT WORKER. Crassly comparing paychecks is sort of “corporate culture” at my job and hardly anyone thinks twice about it. So I’m generally not shy about talking incomes and I have to consciously remind myself that most folks in the U.S. find it rude.
This is very true. Unless I know you very well, we won’t be discussing sex, money, health or my plans for children in any great detail. If you’re not my close friend, I just don’t feel comfortable revealing those aspects of myself to you. If that makes me repressed, I can live with it.
Vaguely embarrassed, not extremely embarrassed. But for you, anything.
I make up for my unwillingness to talk about personal details in my life for my willingness to talk about politics, religion, and other peoples’ deeply-held but ill-informed beliefs. 
There are usually salary surveys available for different types of jobs, which would be more useful than data on what one person is making.
In the US many government jobs have their pay rates published. That’s good in that it gives some accountability, but bad because there is always some jerk writing into the paper not understanding why a guy in control of a 100 million dollar budget and hundreds of employees is making more than he is.
When I was a manager used to own the spreadsheet we used to do raise computation every year. There are so many factors involved in setting pay that two people comparing can easily add to hard feelings. There were factors of starting salaries, of who was furthest away from where we wanted them to be and all sorts of stuff. There are lots of ways of this being misinterpreted.
The most extreme case of privacy I ran into was when I was stuck in a United Way drive. One guy objected strenuously to the fair share cards, which had amounts for fair share, being sent home. He didn’t want his wife to know what he made. :rolleyes:
In the past I’ve been disappointed in my ability to find such info. I guess they might be useful for some occupations, better than others.
2 examples:
My BIL was a long-time partner for one of the big accounting firms. I was curious as to exactly how much he might have made, but was surprised at my inability to really get good info on the average earnings of a top accounting firm partner. I would have thought that was more readily available. It probably is, within industry publications, but I could not get at it.
A couple of years ago I was interested to find how much the top skiers made. Unlike golf, where the earnings for each tournament are published and you can find plenty of info on a player’s endorsement income, I was surprised at how little i found on skiing. I’ve had the same experience for other non-major sports.
You know your salary to the mill? Damn. I know it to the Benjamin…and if I looked at my pay stub, it would still only tell me to the cent.
My salary is public information and published all over the place. I don’t feel vulnerable because of it.