Originally Posted by
FlyingNasaForm
What brought us to this point?
I believe it was the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low. This is what happens when the government interferes with the free market and fixes the price of money (interest rates). If we had no fed (like the constitution dictates) and let the free market control the price of money, we wouldn't been here.
Government isn't the answer, it's the problem
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In response to your question on how do we keep supply low:
We don't. Would you want the price of beef to be kept low so farmers could make more money, at the expense of the consumer? Or the supply of medicine, or milk, or gasoline?
Go to the library and pick up a copy of Economics in one lesson By Henry Hazlitt, it's a good book.
But the bottom line is that airline unions are not going anywhere.
I'm not a commodity, and it's not my responsibility to be cheapened, or let market forces take effect, for the good of the consumer. You're trying to relate the price of goods and services to pilot wages, and it's not making sense to me. Pilots and management are not balanced forces. Management can change supply at their whim, which kills the bargaining power of pilots, as individuals. Pilots have no control over this. If they did, unions would be unnecessary. Why should anyone's wages be subject to the free market, when they have a clear way of getting around that (unions), and being paid a fair wage for the type of work they do? I don't understand your point, that wages should be subject to the negative effects of supply and demand. The only group this would benefit is management. Pilot wages have no direct correlation to the market affects of an airlines success, or lack of success. If an airline can't pay a fair wage, and turn a profit at the same time, then they are being mismanaged somewhere along the line. Either they are not adapting to a changing business environment, or they are just plain mismanaging the operation. It can't be blamed on wages. It's like the US auto industry building cars that no one wants, that fall apart and guzzle gas, and then blaming union wages for management's epic failures.