Lufthansa, puts the pilots into ab initio after a baccalaureate in engineering.....
No, all you need for abinitio is your Abitur, which one can get after just 12 years of school. No degree needed at all. Besides, Lufthansa doesn't hire anymore. Of coure there was the option to do a bachelors degree (International Degree in Aviation Systems Engineering and Management B.Eng.) on the side, it just extended the pilot training from roughly two years to four years and was an option that only a minority took.
Ab initio and Multi Crew Pilot License - so he's stuck at F.O. and for the one airline only.
Wrong again. After the end of the LIFUS phase, usually around 100 hours on the line, he can change employers within the whole EU (and probably other regions that do recognize the MPL). Once he gets his 1500 hours total experience, which is around 1400 on the line, he can apply for a full ATPL, just requires a normal SIM check with a few more boxes ticked.
These guys don't make any money. Who cares how old they are. They are part of the race to the bottom.
Easyjet isn't really, at least not on all contracts. They do have regional contracts, so it depends where you are based. I only have the complete figures for the german CLA (easyjet is unionized), and that puts the captain at five years with the company on around 157k € a year (close to 177k $) and the first officer at just shy of 48k €, or slightly less than 54k$ a year.
Now, ryanair is a completely different story of course. No union representation, fake self employment with all the usual problems that brings including having to pay back taxes and fines in the high six figure region once the tax authority gets wise (which happens currently in germany).