I have a BS in Electronic Engineering and some post graduate classes also in EE along with having taken many short courses in project engineering and project management. I spent most of my career as an individual contributor as part of a team. I have also worked as a project manager in multiple positions - Which meant I managed technical details, project budgets, and day to day interactions within a project team. I have also managed small sized engineering departments. Bear in mind that my personal work experience is mostly with professionals and not unskilled workers. I am a registered Democrat not a Trump lover. My sympathy is with the working men and women. But I know how business works and what the limitations are. What I said is based on my own experiences and observations - Stuff that happened to me. While we may all wish businesses worked differently, if a business does not make money in the long run it will not survive and then everyone there gets laid off when the business closes. In my own career I have hit the salary limits before in my position which left me with option of finding a better paying job elsewhere or a different position in the same company. Sadly finding a different and better paying position in the same organization is usually harder than finding one outside the organization. That’s in part because usually your current boss usually has to agree to your transfer and that will leave them with the problem of finding a replacement for you on top of your finding a good fit elsewhere in the organization. But it’s a balancing act, if your resume shows you frequently change jobs then the people looking to hire you tend to assume you won’t stay long in the job they are looking to fill. I have a suspicion that when the original poster went to their boss to ask for more money they wound up creating the impression they were dissatisfied in their position and with the company in general. Then boss decided that instead of waiting for OP to eventually quit they would both punish them for speaking up and create an incentive for them to quit by cutting their salary. It’s cheaper and less legally risky to get someone to quit than fire them or lay them off. Any time you make the discussion with your employer solely about money you run the risk of doing that. A more nuanced approach is to try to make them feel that you want to work with them to become a more valuable contributor in the future which would include the unspoken goal of raising your salary. Or if that’s too subtle, talk about other open positions with the organization that have more responsibilities (and a higher salary). The business world is schizophrenic in certain ways - It all boils down to money in the way the organization behaves yet workers are tainted if they ask for more money.

I'd say the business world is more psychopathic than schizophrenic, frankly, because most of them don't give the slightest **** about anyone but themselves.