Atleast for the past few decades, salaries have increased less than what's needed to compensate for the change of value of the currency. Meaning the amount you make each year will on average be worth less.
int execl(const char *pathname, const char *arg, ...);
Normally you would call it like execl("program", "program", "argument", NULL), duplicating the program's name/path, but it's possible to set the 2nd argument, which corresponds to argv[0] (in the case of execl), to something different. This behaviour just isn't always exposed in the shell and other languages.