Jofm5;
As SLF I was surprised at the figures you were quoting for first officer etc. I did a search and came up with
Aviation Career Salary Ranges
Are CC really paid better than pilots - it makes no sense to me !
The "Salary Ranges" list you found is pretty accurate in my experience. There are variations of course, according to collective agreements and so on. You can see that the potential for senior pilots is high but it takes a long time to get there. My own highest years were years 30 - 35. It took 20 years to break 100k/year.
My point is, not only are pilots paid far less for their work than other careers but the salary ranges will not attract "the best and brightest" who will have, (if they're that smart), looked at aviation-as-career and decided "no thanks" after taking a look at how pilots are treated. Mind you, healthcare workers and teachers are also being treated badly in terms of hours-in for pay-received..."more for less" is the mantra, but the starting salaries are higher.
Pilots are, in general, paid better than CC. There was a move afoot a while back at one airline in which F/A's were demanding equal pay with pilots because theirs was a "safety job" as well. A couple of responses were possible...one being the title of this thread, another was the usual comparison of training, standards etc. While the job is important and I have always had respect for those highly-trained people who are responsible for getting my passengers off an airplane in a hurry, it takes about six weeks from off-the-street to "qualified" for an F/A and often, in strikes, (non-F/A) management will step in with a few days' "training" to replace striking workers, in which case all slogans regarding safety-first go right out the window and become "safety first, except when....".
Enough thread drift. Cheers!