My fav part of the 90s (in the US) is that the federal government introduced a law that would give significant raises to government employees to keep their compensation on par with other similar positions, however it has literally never been enacted since every single president since its inception has declared a national emergency to prevent it.

They also had RIFs in the 90s where they gutted half a million federal government employees. All while Alan Greenspan idiotically thought we'd never see a crash again (because markets did so well through the decade).

What I am saying is, at least in the US, everything is fucking made-up.

For anyone curious, I think this is that law.

Although FEPCA provides for an automatic formula to determine the annual pay raise, this formula has been ignored due to the cost of implementation. The President has authority under FEPCA to submit an "alternative" pay plan with a lower raise than that called for by the FEPCA formula (or none at all) "if because of national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare" [5 U.S.C. §5303(b)(1)].