Yeah but the difference is that said person with the good-paying job that they hate has the luxury of complaining about his/her job; your income is in essence your leverage to make such remarks. However, in the case of starving artists [pilots] your economic position does not afford you such luxury. That is why you can't come home as a pilot and go to your family: "I know you're hungry Timmy, but daddy had a GREAT week at work! Isn't it worth it now? I love you Timmy.." It is not a realistic computation of opportunity cost, i.e. you cannot feed your family with takeoffs and landings, or job satisfaction for that matter, you can only exchange goods with cold dead cash. You can adequately calculate your opportunity cost in job satisfaction against cash, and certainly against the well-paid peers who presumably hate their job (adjusted for the fact the love their salary), but only when you've met your basic needs. If you're not even meeting those, saying you're foregoing cash for job satisfaction is an artificial argument and that's why pilots don't have the argument leverage as the high paid nurse, she's got basic needs down, you don't.

You can always complain about the soul-sucking job that keeps your IRA account fat every year and affords you two cars and a house in the "desirable" suburb. It's not as much about choices as it is about leverage.

In order for a pilot career to be "worthwhile" you have to transcend the payment in takoffs and landings thing. You have to effectively leverage your economic position to the point where you can "afford" the career. The examples are pretty classic. You have the 20-something recent college grad, yeah he can afford the moving around for 20K/yr, with some remnant of parental subsidy (never acknowledged but always there), they have sufficient leverage at that specific point in time to make that choice. Likewise for the early 40s career changers. Fat in the savings account, they are able to leverage their present expense of a family with cold liquid cash and hedge their bets that they'll be able to regain suffcient income power to make their income leverage permanent as their savings flush month by month. Lastly we have the perma-bachelor, this is the only true case of permanent leverage in the pilot profession. Answering only to his personal spending and no family, he/she has the power to always leverage his income state in favor of his chosen profession and is able to effectively afford it at all times and during all employment circumstances (furlough, contract concessions, regional CA to major FO pay cut, lateral regional FO moves etc).

The median is the one who has the problem. Today's 30 somethings with the young family are the ones who represent the median. If you were unable to attain an income position in 5 or so years to sustain your lifestyle as your life circumstances change and dictate the increase in income, you're hosed. As we know, no lateral career progression, furloughs, no defined retirement benefits are not the kind of job descriptors that the median household would propose himself to use as a primary source of income for a family. Those on this board who were time/luck-favored to be able to attain high enough seniority have effectively leveraged their income postion to be able to say they can afford to "pursue their passion in life". That is of course until they get furloughed and are unable to command the same income position because of an industry without lateral career options, unlike the rest of the rational economic world.

Look, I'm in the boat of "fulfilling my passion in life" rather than put a bullet through my head as an engineering mouse-pusher in some window-less corporate bunker in Dallas-Fort worth, and I did make that choice, but I can only do so to the point where I can leverage my income position to be able to make such choice. I can't be an educated fool and pretend that if I click my heels and wish it so, that getting paid in landings is all I'll ever need and want because it gives me a warm fuzzy. Come on. You have to temper your desire to live in fantasy land with that econ 101 class I hope you had paid more attention in college to. That doesn't make your dream less legitimate, as much as the timing-favored finger-pointers on this board would like you to believe, but you have to meet your basic needs before you can be in a position where you can start knocking on the conventional wisdom that your neighbors are silent disheartened laborers in their slow march to death while they afford life and you don't. Maybe regional CA living in base is the closest to a secure enough dream as the median will be able to reach, and in that respect the boat has sailed and people need to get informed, but for the sake of your fellow pilots, let's quit it with the price inelasticity, it's embarassing and devalues your own bargaining power.