I think we're missing Pilotontherise's larger point in the clamor of people screaming "we're underpayed" and "no way this job rocks!" College may not be necessary for a shiney jetjob, but I think middle school still is, so I imagine that everyone is familiar with the concept of supply and demand, and needs no remedial education. Agreed, yes, the issue is not "what we deserve", but what we're able to negotiate. On a micro scale, that holds water. However, in a labor market that is completley controlled by political considerations, free market aphorisms do not apply. If the company can abrogate its contracts more or less at will by utilizing the RLA after a shell-game sham bankruptcy (Mesaba), or create an alter-ego at will towards the same goal (TSA/GoJets), the natural balance of powers in a free-market economy is crippled.
This is what makes me beat my head against a wall when people say "get another job". The stratification of incomes in the United States has been increasing for decades, but only now are we seeing the result of this stratification. The working class are becoming destitute "droogs", of essentially no redeeming social value at all, other than being warm bodies in the seats of wal-marts and burger-kings. Formerly middle class jobs (like, say, ours) are becoming working class "cash the check to make the mortgage and buy the groceries" wage-slave positions. And then, at the top, absurd salaries for "talent players" are more and more the norm. Even the polticos do not in essence dispute this. Read the numbers of H-1s issued for jobs which Americans really CAN'T do. They simply lack the will to do anything about it (or some would say the ability, given that they are beholden to the same idiot electorate that failed 5th grade and votes based on ridiculously vague "statements of purpose" and the ability to "feel their pain".) All of these problems are chickens that were hatched thirty, forty, and fifty years ago, and are only now coming home to roost.
This is why it is inane to blame "teh boosh" for the latest round of economic stratification. You might just as well blame Clinton. Or Bush. Or Reagan. Or Carter. Like all national crises, it occured in small increments, largely on ground given to win back ground lost.
What IS clear is that radical steps are required to dope-slap america out of the rapidly escalating cycle of economic self-destruction in which we find ourselves. And not just politically or economically, but morally. My own preference would be that the "moral" angle not be religiously affiliated, but rather a simple re-affirmation, from the grassroots level, that there is more beautiful and sacred about life than being able to afford (on credit, of course) the latest flat panel big screen or Lexus. If that makes me a hippie, spray me tie-dye. That's not to say that pilots oughtn't be paid well, but that what qualifies as "paid well" often has a lot more to do with quality of life than with raw numbers.
For those who believe that we live in a free market (if any of you made it this far), read DeTocqueville, a classic (and deservedly so) on the nature of our Republic. Pay particular attention to the necessity of a vibrant and thinking middle class. Then ask yourself whether, if current trends continue, the future is likely to hold more or less of one.
