1. The wealthy don't typically look to increase their wages, mainly because it's much harder to dodge tax on them.
2. Only if the only statistic you look at is how much wages have increased in the last year, ignoring all of the other statistics like rent, rising food/energy insecurity, a decrease in retail volume yet increased revenue, etc.
> 2. The CPI might not be perfect, but it's still better than a vague handwavy argument backed by zero statistics.
Who said anything about being handwavy or lacking statistics? We have freely available data on how many people are using food banks, how much energy prices and rent have risen, on the much greater rise in the cost of supermarket own brand goods as compared to branded goods, etc.
We know for a fact that people are spending more and buying less. I'm not sure it takes a genius to understand that the people who were already struggling are going to suffer a much greater drop in their quality of life than the class whose main gripe is how "sad" it made them to raise their rents or lay off employees.