On things that are not as it seems

Dilbert's Principle:
17. After any salary raise, you will have less money
at the end of the month than you did before.

I thought this was a figure of speech...in the lines of: having more money means spending more, until I saw my paycheck. I was already budgeting the extra pay for a digital cable subscription until I realized I'm actually getting less than I had before. How is this possible? Well, it looks liker the pay increase I had just bumped me on a higher income tax bracket and increased everything else tax wise.

It makes sense for the tax-er but its as hell as a bummer for the tax-ee. It means that there will be times that a pay increase is an actual increase and there will be times when all it does is the reverse. What if I request to accept the promotion, put it on record, skip the monetary pay increase and make it a cummulative pay increase later when it actually becomes a plus on my net pay. Probably not in this universe Nelson.