Somehow related to HP Calculators

[EdS2]

If you give the same raise every year, the salary goes up linearly. If you increase the raise linearly, the salary will go up quadratically. This just might be sustainable for the business. But if you increase the raise each year by multiplying it by a constant, now the salary is exponential. This is famously not sustainable in the long run!

I do like Albert's approach: by looking at pairs of years, the staircase of salary increases now looks like a straight line, and everything is easier.

A note on vocabulary: a bonus is not (in UK English) anything like a salary increase. It's a one-time payment. As such, it is a variable reward which doesn't commit the company to ever-increasing costs. And, ideally, the salary as such - the base salary, without the bonus - is enough for the employee to feel comfortable. The bonus is optional, and in tough times the bonus may disappear.

A note on Italian employment: I had an understanding that in Italy the employees are paid 1/13 of their annual salary each month. At the end of the (calendar?) year, the 13th payment is paid, which allows it to take into account any complicated taxation or other deduction, and also allows it to act as a Christmas bonus - even though everything could, in principle, be figured out with 12 equal monthly payments.

Another calendrical oddity: while it's normal for salaried people in the UK to be paid monthly, sometimes the payment is (or was) made on a specific day of the week, which means the employee who thinks in terms of weekly budgets now needs to consider the 4 week month and the 5 week month, and budget accordingly.