Interesting comments there 'chris'
I feel it's a different world these days
There's a lot more 'competion ' for the youth of today to persuade them towards a flying career. It's the following reasons that I think has us at where we are now, too many positions not enough pilots to fill them.
Many years ago the IT industry was all but non existant. The normal path for most youths was either to take up a trade,(usually from a tech school) become a professional such as a doc, lawyer dentist, scientist etc.(usually high school) or take up flying, somewhere in between. I say flying not in the same breath as professional (it is obviosuly but on a diff level) because it's not when compared to being one of the above (doc, lawyer) You don't need too good an education to be a commercial pilot but that doesn't apply for the other professions. But now in modern day few kids take up flying 'cause of the well known fact that the remuneration compared to other jobs is poor as well as the fact that to get there is hard work & costly with only a medical or slight dissability possibly grounding you for life. We have quite a lazy society these days, if it's hard work/expensive then you have lost a lot straight up!
The few (pilots) that are holding all the Co's together are getting tired.
Extar money won't make that tiedness any better nor will better T&C's what we need is 'pilots', & lots of them !
There is no quick fix here, this mess achieved over years of poor forth site on behalf of the majors & the fact that flying is no longer attractive is where the root cause lies. It's not up to us as pilots to fix the problem, the fix must come from above with strong forward planning. Time, that's the thing we have plenty of, just not for everybody !
CW