Look at what we are debating here. What are hours, experience right. It is what can be recorded and needs to be recorded for every pilot. What else is there other than the physical license that a pilot can be judged by. Not much, you really cant rate kind of training because two pilot from the same training background can be completely different. So setting a minimum hour is really just the airline trying to prevent some yahoo from applying because he has 200 hrs flying his cessna 50 miles for a hamburger once a week. I mean how many people have flown with a captain with thousands of hours and was still incompetent. Number of hours is just a rough way to estimate experience. Then you can argue different kind of hours, piston cross country, piston flight instruction, jet xcountry, 121 experience, military; which is more worthwile. There is no right answer we as pilots have just gotten used to associating hours with flying ability, when really it doesnt make you a great pilot or a bad pilot. That said the more hours you have the better chance and learning the problem solving skills nescessary for our job, but there is no way to measure that. And like others have said where else are we going to find pilots, I agree that if the pay was higher more would probably be attracted but maybe not.

That is why we have standards, checkrides, and TWO crew.