You make it sound like we have monopoly on 0% state income tax. We don't. For example, if you lived in RNO or LAS, would you commute to LAX or SFO to be a captain? The difference is, at a legacy, you'll have to ask yourself that question rather quickly vs. upwards of a decade at Southwest. I'm not even gonna throw in the widebody FO into the mix even though that's what also allows a much faster upgrade there.
I've been labeled "Pollyanna" by many on this board. Where are you Eeyore, SlipKid, Lewbronski, bcz17?
And they're right... Southwest has been very good to me and I have been a bit of a Pollyanna. I live in my domicile and I've been playing "Squid Games" with Scheduling since right after IOE. I've averaged 150-155 TFP monthly my entire time here and I'm a 6th year guy. Do the math. Even when we were overstaffed, I managed to hit those numbers because the game changed and I adjusted. This year, my W-2 will be in the high 200's. One can crush it at Southwest even as an FO, but that comes at a substantial QOL hit.
The point I'm trying to illustrate is that this is not 2008 with abundance of qualified pilots on the street and people both in the military and civilian world chomping at the bit to come here. In fact, when I was hired in 2016, we lost the equivalent of at least 2 full new hire classes to Delta alone. They were hiring quite a bit, United was sputtering a bit unlike today, Fedex hiring a trickle, American wasn't hiring as many either, etc. Not to mention that in 2016, we were in the heated contract negotiations and have 1000+ pilots picketing at various cities. The end result? IIRC, it was 15% raises, but the first year guys got the largest pay raises. We got 35% raise to first year rates, and apparently, it wasn't even SWAPA's request - it was the Company's request. The retention of the new hires got the Company's attention. Here we are, coming into 2022 and retention just might become an even bigger issue.