Accepting a counter-offer is almost always a bad idea; no matter how much money is on the table. After accepting a counter-offer you are bought and paid-for, you decided to stay for the cash and, unfortunately, your loyalty to the company will be questioned forever after.
If loyalty means "you can fuck me over and I'll stick around," it's a vice, not a virtue.
Loyalty keeps sweatshops fully staffed while keeping good businesses from replacing anyone who is a bad fit.
In fact, why would any business want a "loyal" employee, someone incapable of recognizing or acting in situations that have grown lopsided? If someone struggles with strategic decisionmaking in their own life, why trust them to aggressively act in the best interests of the business?
Feudalism is long dead. The occasional job change shouldn't merit a scarlet letter.
In my mind, a loyal employee is one who will ride out the ups and downs in a relationship, and put in the effort necessary to make things work. The same is true for a loyal employer.
To that end, I think a loyal employee should speak up when they think they deserve more money, because it is in everybody's best interests that they be fairly paid. And I think a loyal boss should a) do their best to make sure that employees are already fairly paid, and b) when they slip, to be grateful that an employee has taken the risk of talking about something that can be difficult.
By "too simple", I meant that his model of the world was too black and white. Trust isn't a binary condition. It's a continuum. A collaboration.
If my boss ever mentions it in a sentence. I swear I'll quit within a week.
Loyalty to a capitalist legal entity who will fuck you for a dollar is absurd. Reserve your loyalty for your family.
Those signals are positively correlated with future raises. (I agree that getting an off-cycle counter will have some negative correlation to your future raises, mostly because "you already got some of it" will be on the mind.)
However, that highly depends on the company, especially large one. There is very often a disconnect between line management, HR, and all the parallel hierarchies that make up the company - meaning there is no direct relationship between people caring about your loyalty and people that have the means to do anything about it.
Personally, nowadays I'm almost convinced there is no drawback. I have seen just too many people offered a red carpet for years after such threats.