That's "bad news leads" again! Discussion about "inflation" always presumes that it hurts everyone, even though (by definition) it's just a rescaling of an existing economy and that for every loser there's a winner.

In fact salaries in the bay area have been rising ahead of and faster than inflation, so yes, it seems like a good bet. Also property owners (remember them from upthread?) are broadly helped by inflation as their mortgages aren't inflation-indexed (i.e. inflation makes their total debt go down in real value).

But none of that nuance matters, because bad news leads.

In general inflation helps those with debt and hurts those with savings.

But even if raises and such occur, they don't happen instantaneously, and so people don't like inflation. Gas prices can go up tomorrow, but you won't get a cost-of-living increase for half a year or more.

For those who have the vast majority of their debt in a 30 year fixed loan on a house, inflation is kinda nice once you get past the rough parts.

> Gas prices can go up tomorrow, but you won't get a cost-of-living increase for half a year or more.

And what if prices are going up tomorrow BECAUSE everyone got a "cost-of-living" increase last year? They did! And they tried to buy stuff with the excess cash, and there wasn't enough stuff, so prices went up. (Obviously real causes are complicated, and supply shock is a big part of the current inflation drivers and not just demand, but you get the point.)

This is exactly what I'm saying: bad news leads. We don't want to talk about the flip side of natural relationships, we just want to complain.

[1] That's not a thing, by the way. All raises are for cause, even if they call it "cost of living" what they really mean is "retention".

Broadly, they have to but that doesn't mean that tech salaries will - they've so far outstripped inflation over the last 20 years that they could stagnate or drop for 10-20 years and still be way ahead.