It's very hard for people to accept that this might even be the case, many people just assume that transparency is better for workers.
That said I think Jury is still out on pay transparency mostly because there isn't that much practical data. The EU has been navigating it for a few years but research is still ongoing.
One paper (which is more focused on pay gap reporting, which is longer implemented and seems to have limited impact) suggests salary disclosure in job ads actually increases wages.
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pay-transparency-in-pro...
It's definitely obvious that internal salary transparency will a) act to normalise salaries over the long term and b) generally depress salaries. But disclosure at the job as stage is less clear.
A more real time view of the change in people’s pay to quality of life at work ratio can help people decide what to train in and how much to invest in the training.
We will invent narratives to protect our ego and will happily keep other people down (including ourselves) instead of confronting this.
"He just got promoted because he's more outgoing, he's not more talented than me!"
Ok let's assume thats true. But if your job involves spending 40 hours a week with someone (more than your family), it turns out humans value being around charming, outgoing people. Is this wrong or is it the market accurately assessing relative value in the context of the actual work (collaborating with other humans)?
See also: hiking the minimum wage (possibly the most obvious example of academic corruption), rent controls, taxing the rich, etc.
There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary ones are 1) economists also respond to incentives and those think tank jobs pay really well and 2) prestige in the industry is also a commodity - a commodity which can be bought and sold. The level to which money talks in this industry is reflected by the wages - always higher than all other humanities.
As an example the freakonomics guys popularity are to popular economics what k pop is to music: a slick, highly refined, marketed product from a superbly well oiled marketing machine.