Happy wanderer, I understand your point here. However, if you can see it from my point of view, that is that in real terms the pay has plummeted. Unfortunately the understandable human nature that something is better than nothing is relentlessly forcing down pay. And there is now an entire generation of pilots that have no idea how good it once was and are prepared to accept crap as normal.
You'll forgive me for dismissing "a reasonable wage" as not really good enough when my real pay has been nuked in the last few years. At the rate the the decline is proceeding at, your "reasonable wage" is gonna be very unreasonable very soon.