his Dudeness,
you'll note from the side panel that I too am no spring chicken. I too worked my ass off to pay for my own training, with no debt.
However, as per reply to Flintstone - how much did your licence cost you? Could you do the same thing now? I doubt it - but that's a question you need to ask yourself having REALLY looked at it. The thing is you look at it through retrospective eyes, not from the viewpoint of "how would I do it now".
I am full of admiration for anyone that works their ass off to get what they want/need, but your story hails from 1991, by your own admission....how long would it take you of that life to fund the £50k(ish) it now costs? I agree, people want it now, now, now and this is bad - indeed to my mind, one of the root causes the economy is in it's state. But the problem isn't with those people who start flying at 18, or the parents prepared to pay, it's to do with the fact that working as a sparky and then going to the field, whilst trying to live in an economy such as the current one is just about totally unviable now. That option has been just about totally removed by inflating costs of accomodation, living, flight training in particular, that has not been matched by associated rises in income - but people still live in the mistaken belief it IS viable. You're basing your expectations of peoples behaviour on what YOU did in 1991 when finances were substantially different. When a three bed detached house could be had for less than £60k. When flight training cost what? £20k? God knows I'm not seeking to validate the pay to fly generation. It is wrong. purely wrong. But the point is that working as a sparky now and generally trying to follow the route you did, would probably take C.10 years. And you're STILL faced at the end with either a pittance as an FI (again, for the record, which I think is wrong) or by paying. Stop living in the past, recognise the current world for all it's myriad of wrongs IS different and we may get some way to understanding WHY people behave the way they do. And once that behaviour is understood then perhaps the resolution can also be found. But whilst people just purely think that behaviour is driven by an unreasonable desire to NOT do "what I did - they don't know they're born" then it's incredibly easy to divide and conquer and it will never get better.