1960's Airline Pilot - Actually flew the aircraft, with minimal if any computer systems. Navigator required for longer flights which involves a degree of skill.
2011 Airline Pilot - Monitors the systems, computer fly's the aircraft and the GPS/INS etc. navigates.
As much as I hate to think about it, airline pilots are now 95% systems operator 5% hands on pilot. And this is how the public and management view the position. This is reflected by the modern day hiring practices of airlines around the world, cadetships take your young individuals who suit the role and place them in the cockpit after teaching them the basics of flying with a big emphasis on systems management and human factors. As a result your multi crew license was born.
From the perspective of one of the worlds largest mining companies, a big emphasis is placed on requirements of the crew's who operate smaller aircraft (B200) etc. because of the hands on nature of the flying which is conducted, they dont ask for 2000k TT + for the hell of it and even then we are seeing ever increasing levels of automation in these smaller aircraft. To attract this experience they do pay a premium in the market.
And yes I agree that the 1% of the time when something goes severely wrong in any aviation environment, the experience of the crew goes a long way. However the risk analysts have decided that its an acceptable risk to see what the systems operators can do in that situation.
Now train drivers make as much and in many cases more than half the captains salaries listed in the above post. Why is this? It is not supply and demand, there are plenty of punters who want the job. (look at all the train nuts out there)
I can only bring it back to the position and the degree of manual input and decision making by the driver. Put it this way a train that breaks in half is the most common incident in rail ops, with a significant cost to the company each time it occurs $500k - $1m + per incident in lost revenue. This is almost always attributed with driver error. With driver input having such an effect on bottom line it makes sense to pay them a high salary. (well that is the opinion of a general manager from one of our big miners)