I’m saying that it’s pointless to get upset at someone getting a raise when the person in charge makes orders of magnitude the amount of money you do. That is the problem, not labor doing what it can to eke out a microscopic amount of leverage.

That's whataboutism, though. Why should I focus on some other problem when we are talking about this problem now.

This isn’t a problem. That’s the point.

Cheaters getting ahead of honest people is of course a problem and I don't understand how you could possibly say it isn't. Those cheaters are taking away jobs and promotions from people who deserve it more.

If by the cheaters you mean the executives and investors who personally capture all of the profit, then I couldn't agree more. The reason that we're suffering from "inflation" and see record high wealth inequality is because the people at the top are hoarding all of the capital and profit leaving little for the vast majority of people.

Yes and that's bad but kevin over there cheating his way up the corporate ladder to be one of those execs is PART OF THAT PROBLEM

On a meta note, trying to engage with you seriously is annoying because every single one of your comments is whataboutism.

It’s not about impacting the CEO’s pay, it’s about exceeding maximum value from a job that is exploiting you in order for them to get that pay and benefit shareholders. Other than a few SMEs run by genuinely good people, capitalism puts us in adversarial position because if we don’t take one we’ll be hugely taken advantage of.

Is there any evidence, other than these people using unethical methods to get hired on initiall at companies, that they didn't earn the raises they received?

I don't have any evidence, but that's the premise of the article. Whether it is evidence based or not was not the topic of my comment.

But to answer your question subjectively, yes, in my experience cheaters will cheat. If they used unethical methods to get hired that's a strong indicator that they will also cheat their way to raises and promotions.