And during Covid and the Ukraine Crisis for the longest time people agreed to accept no wage increases in order to keep the companies from failing in those times.

But instead of that being honored now, the companies just make record profits and argue that wage increases would stipulate inflation.

Just look at the Q2 chain down from there:

• 2023 0.1
• 2022 -4.2
• 2021 3.2
• 2020 -4.7
• 2019 1.2

So over the past 5 years the effective wage increase was -4.6%. Meanwhile companies raked in record profits after record profits and enjoyed a lot of bailout money. To clarify, it is -4.6% over five years, that is about -0.93% p.a.

@agarorn @filister See, the system works when looked at in a mean way! You just gotta assume everyone is the same and in the same situation and dealing with the same things and just keep doing this for a century or so and you'll get meaningfull results.