Originally Posted by
The Juice
The government can not have the direct say on a minimum a company can charge if we want to live in a free market society, it can not happen.
Again, if they want to determine prices they will have to re-regulate the industry and then the free market is gone. What the government can do is raise safety standards across the board and this will force all airlines to raise fares to cope with the costs, the ones that do not will fail. This is a way the government can manipulate the market without destroying the free market aspect of it.
As much as I want more pay for us all I do not want it at this cost. Letting the government control business practices pushes us towards a quasi-socialist state where the government may not control business outright but can control what it does.
(sorry if my english is difficult to read. It is not my first language)
The problems is that it has to be a "responsible Capitalism" for Capitalism to work.
In an Ideal scenario Capitalism works fine without rules but the Airline industry is not an example of great or healthy capitalism.
The airline industry race to the bottom.......mostly due to almost every airline operating with loss while trying to compete....(not the best example of capitalism)....has lost all the respect for pilot compensation, quality and safety and when pilots are paid less than fast food workers and are entitled to food stamps then it has gone too far.
When there is noone to help or represent the pilots against the lack of respect that the airline industry shows for them, for what they have invested and for their skills and for the fact that they risk their life every day at work then the goverment has to do something about it.
When a goverment gets involved and stops a sick part of the system it has nothing to do with socialism it is just being responsible.
Capitalism has to be regulated in the areas needed when it gets out of balance or it becomes destructive instead of being productive.
I work out of Atlanta and most flights in and out of there are oversold almost every day at every hour.
When airlines are flying at full capacity and losing money then the system model they are operating by is sick. How can that be good capitalism?
The only way to stop the airlines from lowering their ticket prices and tryng to balance it by cutting salaries, etc is by regulation as they are not showing they know how to be responsible.
People are paying today the same prices for flying than 1978 while the salaries has increased many times since.
So many in the airline industry has said it is imposible to raise price on tickets but they did incrase the fees for bags and other fees did they not?.
Did people stop flying? No. The decrease in flying has to do with the general economic situation of the country and nothing to do with the fees so if the airlines could put all these fees and people kept flying does it not tell that there would not be any problem in raising ticket prices?
Just an example.....imagine If prices would be raised by all airlines 100%. Say then that 50% would stop flying (that is a lot) as they would feel they would not be able to afford flying. That would generate the same amount in revenue than today but it would release 50% more in capacity and it would lower all types of cost in bag handling, all other ground based operations and the overworked air trafic system would suddenly get a break................
I am not saying ticket prices should be raised 100% but how is it that people can take a 100% increase in the gas price for their car but cannot take any increase in airline ticket prices? that must be bs......
also...........many of the regionals that are making a profit are buying other companies or have tons of cash in the bank but they claim at the same time that they cannot pay their pilots more than these poverty salaries........
Should that not be looked at by the goverment? Maybe regulating a minimum salary for 121 pilots is the only way many airlines would respect what a pilot should be paid.
When do you think its enough? when do you think the goverment has to stop all this?