It's partly because a 20% raise isn't a 20% raise. Even at the most modest tax bracket (above poverty) that will be reduced down to 17%. So outpacing groceries by 2% doesn't really feel good at all.

Percentages also don't matter as much when you break down raw numbers. A 20% (ignoring taxes) raise when your take home pay is $3000 disappears very quickly into your $6000 credit card debt, or maybe your $700/month car loan, or your $400/month student loans. People making that extra $600 more don't get a breath of relief, they get closer to the surface to breathe at all.

>No one will credit politicians for raising average wages, people will believe they earned their raise themselves.

And this is why we're doomed to fail at this rate. We're in 4 entirely different crises that are entirely above any individual worker's head, but somehow our solution is to just grind our way out. Maybe do some gambling (or sorry, "prediction markets")to get ahead. We're trying to dig out of a hole we didn't make and we just keep shuffling sand around instead of actually progressing.

Debt is where inflation is awesome though, if you have 10% inflation and your wages raise 10%, your car loan and student loans become irrelevant quickly.