In that same world, those guys look at the pilots who are only a few years ahead of them in the system who have nice houses and investment portfolios mainly because of luck with timing. They hear stories of the ‘good old days’ but cannot equate it to what is currently happening around them.
Morals and principles are all well and good. The generations before these guys can sit in their (mortgage free) nice houses with their BMW parked on the driveway and wax lyrical about how these guys are treasonous for heading East. Fast forward 30 years and these same guys, if they’d decided against it, might be sitting in their rented semi with a Vauxhall Astra parked on the driveway feeling morally superior but bloody miserable.
I take your point, but that's the same in every walk of life - the newer generation earning much less than their seniors, and having to listen to how much better things used to be back in the day (am sure 1950s RAF pilots were fed up to the back teeth of hearing from 'The Few'). Not sure we'd all run off to China, Russia etc at the first opportunity though. Or maybe we would, who knows?