Isn't it just that when borrowed cash is free the real risk to your oligopoly is startups doing something dramatically better and stealing your lunch? In that e

Isn't it just that when borrowed cash is free the real risk to your oligopoly is startups doing something dramatically better and stealing your lunch? In that environment the strategy is not about limiting the pay rung jump among the established players, it's about keeping the people talented enough to successfully do a startup from actively looking at that much harder path because buying successful startups is way more expensive than moderately overpaying a few tens of thousands of people. In a higher interest environment the startup money dries up a lot so the risk to your oligopoly is much lower and the demand for yield on your stock increases dramatically so you worry less about a startup and more about maximizing value from your work force (which leads to lower pay on average and layoffs to rightsize), plus the cost of buying a successful startup will be lower because the discount factor from the higher interest rate caps price expansion.