Originally Posted by
87iroc&amullet
With barriers to entry reduced to "sign here," the stampede of 20-year-old kids who would fly for free just to impress their buddies, and proletariat laborers who would naturally rather fly a jet for minimum wage than dig a ditch for minimum wage, has shallowed and widened the talent pool, resulting in such a glut of low-quality (comparitive to those of yesteryear) applicants that any attempt to rectify the payscales in today's environment would be futile.
That may be true if the profession had no barrier to entry, but I think the (relative) difficulty and price of flight training in addition to paying for college would deter the vast majority of those doing it to brag to friends.
As for the second part... there will always be incompetent pilots, and while there are probably more now compared to "yesteryear", hopefully the system will weed them out the way it is designed to (i.e. through checkrides, hiring tests and interviews, proficiency checks, etc.).