Yeah, even the employees that complain about it usually still stick around, and management/owners know that most people won't push it beyond that and actually leave.

Yeah ,it's odd to come short by 1 grand at that point. It's almost as if they were intentionally saying, "we won't match it."

I'm not saying it's right, but it's just business.

I don't actually know the statistics, but I would imagine 80% of people just take their 2 percent raise (really not a raise anyway when you account for inflation) and just keep working, it's only the 20 percent that leave, so mathematically it makes more sense to just rehire and retrain the small(er) percentage of people that leave.

I disagree. A company is only going to pay you what you need to bring you on and increase your salary enough to keep you around. Every company could pay their employees more.

I say OP needs to do what they think is best.