One fact needs to be mentioned: the really good salaries which can be reached after two or three years at several US airlines, if you are lucky enough not to be laid-off, as thousands have been in the past (don't forget how many hundreds of pilots now fly jets and bring home much less than lots of delivery truck drivers, not to mention those in the large trucks), are the results of one thing only-union solidarity.
Any other explanation for the higher salaries, i.e. job skills, college degrees for many...is rotten baloney, to put it nicely.
In the real world of US civilian aviation, you are only worth what you can negotiate, preferably from a position of strength. This doesn't imply that every company will become or remain financially healthy, whether pilot salaries are competitive or low.
Many companies which always paid pilots poorly and worked them very hard end up failing anyway. Soem of the highest-paying US airlines have earned record profits during a healthy economy.
[ 21 July 2001: Message edited by: Ignition Override ]