Originally Posted by
bbtp
i do understand - i invested a huge chunk of my life (as well as a smaller chunk of cash on the backside) in the whole pilot thing. that's all a sunk cost - there's nothing i can do about it now other than savor the good memories. now i'm doing something else, because is makes sense for me and my family (both financially and otherwise).
you're right - pilots have "over-invested" in training for the "promise" of out-sized wages. union-driven wages do that by their very nature - when you demand (and get) a wage that is above the natural "market-driven" wage, you lower the rate of employment. this isn't the fault of "the market," it's a consquence of the laws of economics. there's nothing anyone can do about it, short of the government deciding it's going to subsidize pilot salaries (which would have its own negative consequences - and I think most would agree a pilot subsidy would be unfair to every other profession).
the "promise" of high wages was evaporating long before the price of oil boomed. the dramatic rise in the price of oil has only accelerated what was already happening. it's nice to be able to blame someone, but in this case, blaming the speculators is blaming ghosts.
Personally, I would like to blame oil speculation or some greedy hedge fund manager, but realistically I don't know enough about how it all works to say that. I do feel, however, that someone is profiting off of all this while the economy suffers.
Government regulation, by association to deciding a pilot's salary, is a double edged sword in my opinion. The government can provide a stable industry, but the downside to that would be a lot less jobs.
I think their needs to be a delicate balance here, as well as a way of controlling operational costs. Airlines today are continuously gambling on the hopes that fuel costs will not surpass their profit viability.
Hedging is just buying airlines time and money in the grand scheme of things.
I think a big part of the problem was largely due to the fact that oil prices had been so cheap in this country for such a long time that everyone took it for granted. The Ultra-Low cost of fuel never gave people a reason to limit or control their consumption, until today that is.
The government has worked so hard to prevent any one company from monopolizing a industry, Sirius/XM, DAL/NWA, and Microsoft just to name a few. My question is how come oil companies don't seem to have as many legislators restricting their growth?
If I had to venture a guess, I'd say corruption, but again that's just a guess.
Money looks after money, always has always will. Problem today is that the hard work, dedication, and commitment of the many is used to fund the wealth and greed of the few anyway you look at it.