You think 2-8% is a problem? There's a large world outside the US. "Hundreds of dollars" per month is most of my salary, I can afford that only by going hungry half the time.

Probably going to if I want to keep my job, since I'll be making about the same amount of money moving boxes or cleaning toilets, only in much less comfortable conditions.

Yeah, I feel bad about those situations.

It's essentially trying to turn programming into a micro-transaction based pay to play / pay to win outcome, a concept that was gaming related for decades.