In my opinion, it's quite simple. Supply Vs. Demand. Too many of us in the pot for employers to give a damn and hence the price per packet is low and the treatment of each individual is poor. In the UK alone we are pumping upwards of a 2000 CPL holders per year with no where near that amount retiring.
Now, that might also be the case for other careers within the transportation section where the supply outstrips the demand but that's where we turn to regulation and industry lobbying....unfortunately the regulatory bodies are often in the hands of the airlines themselves who pay huge fees to be "regulated" and the lobbying/union groups are often headed up by expired old relics from a bygone era who are buddies of airline management in any case.
The solution I think is that we need to drag our cause into modernity because a lot of people have some very old views about what's going wrong.