[lhorie]

> at the expense of the second employee—and, indirectly, all employees in the sector, because that depresses market rates.

It feels a bit out of touch to say that when they literally do make top-of-band salaries compared to other local companies even after pay cuts. As others have brought up, $250k in NC is pretty darn good pay.

We're not talking about a company squeezing out their janitors where an extra 1k/mo might mean they can quit a second night shift job or afford insuline or whatever. We're in "I want to be able to afford a Ferrari instead of a Tesla" territory. And I don't think I'd be alone in thinking that the latter is harder to sympathize with.

Your argument boils down to "pay me more", and I already took that to its logical conclusion: yes, of course you want to be paid more, get in line. Everyone wants to be paid more, but if that happens, then through the magic of inflation, everyone loses. What people really want is to be paid more while everyone else doesn't, because that's the only way that they get to keep the purchasing power of their money. And forgive me if this is too brutally blunt, but that's just selfishness masquerading as social justice.