<prompt> Human: Why do some people expect yearly compounding salary increases above inflation and advocate find a new job in most cases when it doesnt happen? Looking at the raw numbers:Someone makes 15hour or 31,200year at 18 should theoretically be making 48.93hour or 101,775.58year after 40 years by age 58.If they go to college or take up some other skilled profession where they have a starting salary of 28.85hour or 60,000year after 4 years of education then by age 58 they would be making 83.60hour or 173,896.70year.Thats just at 3 inflation. If we increase it to 5 or 7, which seem to be the minimum that some people will expect as acceptable, the numbers go completely off the charts.At 5, 1531,200 becomes 105.60219,647.65 and 28.8560,000 becomes 167.07347,508.97.At 7, 1531,200 becomes 224.62467,203.08 and 28.8560,000 becomes 329.54685,436.53.Are those numbers reasonable? Are they sustainable? Should all people that are 58 today expect to be making 101,000173,000, 219,000347,000, or 467,00685,000 per year?I understand some of the argument for higher salary is because you become a better resource faster, experienced, knowledgeable, etc and some of it comes from institutional knowledge about the specific company youre currently at.Heres where I start going down a rabbit hole of trying to answer my own question or find alternate ways of handling these scenarios without doubling inflation.If 2 of that 7 is for institutional experience then in theory you should not keep that increase if you change jobs. What if instead of salary increases the institutional knowledge was rewarded by quarterly or yearly bonuses based on salary and years of time at the company? You would still get the 3-5 increase every year but youd also get a 1 bonus after your first year or a quarter of 1 for each quarter up to that first year and then 2 the second year, 3 the third, and so forth. Youre still rewarding employees that stick around, still countering inflation, and still rewarding people for generally becoming better workers.This feels a little too much like trying to use a formula or algorithm to solve a culture or economic problem, but what do you think?Maybe the core of the problem is using and comparing percentages instead of an absolute value for yearly increases?Another random thought is that past a certain point youve learned everything there is to know about a job or a industry, youve gotten the title of Senior, are already being paid the big bucks above the trend line, should you stop getting pay increases beyond inflation if youve already peaked? Most people will say absolutely not, but what _new_ value can you provide your or any other company if youre already following all the best practices and doing things fasterbetter than all of your coworkers theoretically?  <response>: Didnt read that wall o text, but 2 is the feds inflation target, and theyre having a hard time meeting that. 