Even though I agree with raising the hiring mins to 1500 TT and all the other stuff, I still think that it all depends on skills, training, and quality of flying. Someone flying C172s and doing steep turns and stalls (or more like watching your student do it) for 1000 or 1500 hours will not be any more experienced than a pilot with 800 hours.
Now, those guys that are saying that "back in the day" you had to have 500000hours for a regional to hire you..... please, back then an hour of flight time was $5 and now you can't really find a twin for cheaper than $300-$400/h
and most flight schools have ridiculous requirements to fly their twins anyways. I know one that wanted you to buy 25 hours in their super old POS Seminole with an instructor or have 500tt/50me b4 they would let you fly it by yourself. (Funny how some regionals would hire people with half that time and let em fly a jet).
I'll say it again, it should be all about skills and how good you are, I have flown with captains who have been at my airline for 10 or 15 years and they are still garbage pilots (constantly wanting to cross active runways, make wrong turns, S-turns on autopilot and forgetting about the fact that in a turn you need POWER.... and so on). All I'm trying to say is that the number in your logbook is
not everything although 1500 hours sounds good cause HOPEFULLY it will be a start to some good changes in this industry.
Also, I think that the government and the Feds should focus on duty times, pilot fatigue, and the fact that all regional pilots are way overworked and maybe focus on hiring mins a bit later on cause there are only a few airlines hiring now. Plus, the ones that are hiring don't even want to pick up furloughed guys and they rather hire instructors... Go figure.
All in all, I'm glad I'm past that point and don't have to worry about it any more.