When was the last time you got a raise, and what did it take for you to get it?

If you’re in the private sector, we’re willing to bet you had to work — really work — for it.

However you achieved your latest pay bump, it likely wasn’t easy — and it certainly isn’t common these days. Despite the lowest national unemployment numbers in a decade (4.4 percent last month) workers’ wages have remained in a funk since the financial collapse of 2008.

The same can’t be said for the wages of state lawmakers and other top elected officials in Pennsylvania.

Since 1995 members of the General Assembly — already the second-highest-paid state lawmakers in the nation — judges and the state’s top executive branch officials have enjoyed automatic cost-of-living increases tied to the Consumer Price Index for Pennsylvania.

This means that our top elected officials have profited from yearly raises for more than two decades — without need for those pesky, public votes that would call people’s attention to what’s going on, and without having to justify why they deserve raises in the first place.

How does this make us feel?

Think of the scene in the movie “Christmas Vacation,” where Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) opens what he believes to be his Christmas bonus check and instead finds a pudding of the month club membership.

But wait, say defenders of the raises. the pay bumps aren’t that large. Plus, if you want good people in office, shouldn’t you be willing to pony up enough money to attract them to the jobs in the first place?

Yes. And in a perfect world Pennsylvania’s public pension plans would be fully funded, its budgets on time and balanced, and its legislature a collective of nose-to-the-grindstone public servants.

But how well has that been working out?

All we see is a group of 253 elected officials whose pay has grown by 78 percent — from $55,800 to more than $84,000 per year — since 1995. At the same time, their ability to discharge even the most basic, constitutionally-mandated duties entrusted to them has dwindled.

And no, it doesn’t matter that some donate the raises to charitable causes or return the money directly to the state treasury.

Those charitable donations are tax-deductible — essentially a taxpayer-funded tax write-off for these officials.

And regardless of where the money ends up, or if it’s given back, the raises still factor into pension calculations that determine how much elected officials receive once they reach retirement age.

Automatic, annual pay raises for elected officials — who already make tens of thousands of dollars more each year than the average Pennsylvanian — are simply unconscionable.

Lawmakers must repeal this repugnant law. Any pay raises they receive should be merit-based, just like they are for the majority of Pennsylvanians paying their salaries.

It’s time for our elected officials to start living in the real world again.