[garettmd]

There's also the fact that the "inflation rate" is a pretty imprecise number. There's no real inflation rate, it's more of an average of the price increases of various sectors of the economy. But even drilling down into the sectors you have to account for things like geography. So the inflation rate is useful as a gauge for where the economy at the macro level is heading, but for making individual salary decisions at a single company it's not very helpful.