gamecock,
Of all the TG1 people I know who are banging out, not one has mentioned pay. The 2 biggest issues seem to be environmental (e.g moving Leuchars to Lossie) and op tempo. How many ops are Marham supporting now? Good luck getting anyone to answer the phone down there. The move to 6 month OOAs for non-formed units is the icing on the cake.
I completely agree with your post and have not considered pure pay to be a driving factor for a number of years. The compound effect of being told (not asked, as we're military!) to deploy overseas yet again, after only a month or two off the back of a 4-6 month OOA, is killing our people and their good will. Our families are suffering and harmony has been nothing but a buzz word whose guidelines have been stiffly ignored since the concept was defined. We're being asked to do even more with even less and our "zero-defect" and "yes" cultures are wholly responsible and drive our SOs to constantly inform our VSOs that "we can do it" at every turn of the handle. Something's gotta give!