You can insist on reading it that way, but you don't have to. I didn't specify how much the gas prices rose, or how much his pay raise was. Why not? It varies from region to region and industry to industry.
The point is that if you're currently in the workforce, then you likely received a pay raise recently - and some people have gotten quite significant pay bumps. That's an aspect of the current economic picture missed by the conservative doom-and-gloom economy narrative, and the latest front-page politics memes with Joe Biden sniffing a gas station and whatnot.
The smarter critique of my meme would be that it totally misses people who are unemployed, not working, or on a fixed income -- groups of people who would still be hit hard by inflation without the additional compensation of a pay raise.
The answer to that is that Democrats have historically supported (and still support) relief measures like chaining social security benefits to inflation, child tax credits, and increasing unemployment compensation income. Meanwhile, Republicans have continued doubling-down on shrinking the welfare state in any way they can. Most hilariously, some Republican governors have even started to reject the Covid-era federal boost to unemployment benefits, which from their perspective is "free money." It's totally self-defeating and does nothing but hurt their own residents.
So we see Democrats watching all these issues as they develop in the economy and responding accordingly, while Republicans continue to insist on the same ideologically-driven non-fixes.
Caption this Meme 
