Originally Posted by
tsquare
Well.. maybe. I am just painfully aware of my surroundings. Yesterday a friend informed me that his wife, who works... worked at NASA just had the next opportunity for her job pulled out from under her. (KSC, in case you haven't noticed or heard is not in the launching human beings into space any more) Not to worry though, it would have meant that she was going to have to commute from central Florida to Houston. But since that job no longer exists, she doesn't have to worry about that commute. And... he also told me that his job is now in jeopardy. Too bad so sad for him too. But things could be worse, the unemployment rate in our county due to NASA and other gubbamint drawdowns there could possibly be higher. So we have PhDs there that are getting jobs mowing lawns to feed their families.
This first paragraph of your post is a good one, tsquare. Times are tough for a lot of good, smart, hard-working people in this country, and we're blessed to have jobs and pretty dang good jobs at that, relative to the general population. It's good to be reminded of that.
But I don't think that truth precludes us from wanting to making our profession better. I'll remind you that Dave Behncke founded ALPA in the middle of the Great Depression, when unemployment was considerably higher than it is today, and the average wage lower in adjusted dollars. Granted, that desire shouldn't cross over into pilot-group-bashing or whining - I've acknowledged that and apologized for my post of several nights ago. But the desire to make things better is not itself a bad thing, regardless of what's happening outside aviation.