Not quite. They didn't cut wages, they just didn't raise them as fast, and it wasn't a conspiracy, but just the result of vastly more people entering the workforce. If you have more people competing for the same amount of jobs, you can get away with paying them less.
If you only play it for the story, they all have the same amount of linearity. The real value is in the exploration and replayability, doing all the missions again to see what you’ve missed.
