if everyone else in the same profession is granting themselves raises and hiring extra staff, the definition of 'reasonable' gets skewed to "this is how everyone is doing it". And... it doesn't happen overnight, but I'd bet staffing levels and pay scales are pretty out of whack compared to 30 years ago for university staff who basically do the same things as 30 years ago.
There's probably a lot of wiggle room there, but it's not like you can just pay yourself anything.