Adjusting Compensation Through Raises

Cost of living raises, especially in economies with high inflation that erodes the ability to purchase basic necessities, need to be automatic on a yearly basis, if not sooner to more directly keep up with actual inflation rates.  The cost of living applies to everyone, though some are better prepared to weather intensifying financial conditions.  In contrast, merit or seniority raises are individualistic, having to do with a specific worker's performance or the longevity of their career with a company/role.

At minimum, compensation that is livable is the morally required baseline for pay if humans have rights, such as a right to life and to not be taken advantage of in their professional lives.  What exactly constitutes livable wages or salaries would fluctuate with inflation and other factors like the cost of homes, food, and transportation.  There is no single economic value for hourly or yearly compensation that is automatically livable.  Also, by livable, more than just the absolute lowest pay that literally allows someone to survive is in view.  Pay that allows people in ordinary circumstances to steadily save at least steadily, buy necessities, and enjoy some luxuries is livable in a more thorough sense.

Plenty of companies, however, will try to actively sabotage all pay advancement by making raises minimal, infrequent, or untethered to the cost of living or personal merit alike.  For instance, a company that only gives $0.50 raises every year, with today's purchasing power in modern America, absolutely does not treat its workers like full persons with lives and needs, the only reason many of them would work professionally in the first place.  A company that dangles raises to employees and then fights implementing them disregards the humanity and individuality of its workers.

One objection to granting a raise is that if one person has their compensation adjusted to the cost of living, their personal performance, or their seniority, other employees would also have to have their pay adjusted in order for it to be fair.  This could involve significantly increasing the compensation of all sorts of other workers within a company or industry.  In an effort to supposedly be fair by not giving one person a deserved or needed raise while not giving the same to others, these companies end up being unfair to practically everyone, depriving them all of what is deserved or needed.

Adjusting compensation through raises in a broad sense might be desperately needed in many organizations.  Yes, it could be very costly to employers, but they do not deserve to be in business if they cannot "afford" to pay their workers what is livable and reflective of their personal competences.  Some companies that could easily or at least very manageably withstand spending more on pay could still use this fallacious excuse anyway.  Whatever false or irrelevant thing they can cling to in an effort to continue their status quo, these selfish parasites of employers will fight harder to resist raises than many employees would fight to secure them.