Airlines offer very limited off contract compensation and in most cases what they can offer isn't close to enough. They can't hire into a seperate A+ scale. They can pay hotels for training and things like that, but even signing bonuses can be challenged.

Your main point of some free for all high ball bidding fantasy at the majors if we got rid of the regionals and we all would make 400K a year still isn't close to reality though.

What baffles me is the Herculean lack of effort that's (not) being applied at doing anything at the bottom end. DL sold its little flight academy and none of them are doing anything other than lobying for dramatically overpriced college programs to be able to knock off a few hundred hours. That isn't even close to the spool up at the bottom end that's needed. Besides you could set up a votech style school with older planes and none of the overpriced nonsense and get wet commercials left and right while building your own supply and demand for CFI's to the point that 1500 hours wouldn't be an issue anyway. A few hundred hours at a busy flight school is only a few extra months.

Instead the best and brightest in the industry are fiddling while the brushfires spread. Oh well.