Me Myself..
Indie cent seems fairly justified in his reasoning.
You mention that in the past the good salary did not stop morons getting into aviation, I agree. But aviation has changed and is not the same as it was some 20 + years ago. A poor salary package will most definitely not bring in or retain the best and brightest.
I think you are mixing up the issue by bringing in examples of government jobs, such as fire fighters, police force etc. I think everybody would agree that they should get paid more for what they endure much of the time, but such organisations are not commercial entities. The same can be said of NASA - the pay is not bad, but not astronomical, $70-100K ish (excuse the pun).
I will disagree with you regarding the DHL example, purely because the crew was fairly experienced and if I remember correctly came from a military back ground. The training and experience was already there, they had been in aviation a long while and were/ are relatively well paid. The issue was eroding the Ts and Cs, how long can you squeeze these before guys and girls start to say its not worth it.
Having said that, I don’t doubt that talented individuals want to join the profession, but how long will they stay ? Many newbies don’t know what a commercial job is really like. How long will it continue to attract the numbers it does now ? I think there are limits to how much they will wish to effectively subsidise ticket prices. Perceptions are still very much stuck some years ago.
