The company doesn't set the rates, the pilots set their own rates. Even if it took 10,000 hours and a Phd to get hired at a regional, doesn't mean senior pilots are willing to give up their pay for junior new hires. Management will lower the standards to put bodies in the seats, when there aren't enough bodies willing to work at those rates, the planes will be parked. Wages will never go up in this industry unless the PILOTS do something about it, that is the inconvenient truth of this business.