Just Go Read Michael Moore

Basically, after years of no support for their unions, and bankruptcy laws that do nothing to reign in executive compensation, pilot salaries have become so low that pilots frequently have to work 2^nd jobs, and no small number are on food stamps.

You get what you pay for, and right now, we are paying for lots of airliners crashing by not paying pilots enough.

Here's a sample:

I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.

"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop. You know, maybe it's just me, but the two occupations whose workers shouldn't be humpin' a second job are brain surgeons and airline pilots. Call me crazy.

There has been an aggressive war on the wages of people who actually do useful stuff, as opposed to bosses and investors, since the Carter administration, and this is not a good thing.