My lady grew up a literal shack in SE Asia, her family struggled to put food on the table on some occasions and she swam in the gutter with her siblings for fun. She and the siblings are now University educated, with well paid jobs in various 1st world countries due to the hard work and and unbelievable sacrifice of their parents despite how little they had.
ilvaporista and his son are an example of what real life is like for the majority of the worlds population. However, we in this country are spoilt and expect everything to be handed over to us with minimal effort. The middle class parents in UK, who themselves are fortunate to own houses that are warm and dry with clean running water, are just as deluded as their pilot wannabe children when they remortgage their house for £120k and hand it over to L3 et al.
Moan and groan about greedy airlines all you like that are not willing to foot training costs or the greedy FTOs. There will always be fat cats at the top no matter what we try to do to eliminate them. However, despite the sharks, you really can achieve anything you want in life with real hard work, intuition and dedication.