Inflation is 12% and your company offers 3% raises. Oh, and by the way inflation isn't really 12% across that time; rents in many areas were up 30-40%, the actual cart price in the grocery store nearly doubled as the CPI wildly understates that as it does not account for coupons and actual "at register" tape price (only the shelf price before such, and they've disappeared) and more. Health care, for example, is a laughable percentage of the "basket" in the CPI .vs. reality; something that is 20% of the economy is defined as 20% of the spending by mathematical definition so how can it be roughly a quarter of that in the CPI?
