i believe you can pay them less than what they used to get and the employees would still be fine

#hardmoney

A good argument for a pay raise is to calculate the amount of gold/bananas/cheese burgurs that you could have bought per year when you started vs today. In that case you are only asking for payment that was originally agreed upon. There is no reason you should have to take on more responsibility just to maintain your current rate.

Also, the default of doing nothing advantages the employee. The Boss would have to decide whether to have the hard conversations of letting the worker know their wage is going down due to deflation. I like it.

That's true. However it would be virtually impossible to pay your employees the same amount over time for the same productivity, you won't have the revenue likely because nobody is going to buy your goods for the same price in 10 years as they did today in that system.

Perhaps on a very small basis, say 1% or less deflation per year. but even then employees will earn less over a decade.

True.