Posted on 03.26.09 to Pilots by Tristan Smith

WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING.

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With insurance men stuffing breast pockets with stacks of hundreds, America, cyclops of the West, once again turns its all-seeing eye towards revolution. From the tents of each latter-day Hooverville come the grunts and shouts of a frustrated nation, unsure of its future, desperate for the slush of a pre-9/11 empire.

But a horde with pickets is not a revolution. Even if this does turn out to be a bit of 1929-itis, a class revolution is unlikely, and here’s why:

In a huge country like America, moving important things by air has become the norm. Need to be somewhere tomorrow? You don’t get in a truck. And as long as pilots continue to make salaries in the hundred-thousand dollar range, it’s going to be difficult persuading them to join a proletariat movement. It’s going to be difficult to get them to join anything.

So while the internet may be the cradle of some new voice calling for searing, rending change in a partially zombified, partially reborn country, a revolution isn’t near.

Skills pay bills. Paid bills mean happy people. Happy people don’t revolt.

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Post Tags: hooverville, hope, hopelessness, inequality, Pilots, rebellion, revolt, Revolution, THE ECONOMY, the poor, we are lucky

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In the “pre-9/11″ community that you mentioned, highly skilled pilots were able to make a decent living for the endless amount of training they went through. In you post 9/11 call for revolution, many of these pilots are forced to work for pennies on the dollars of what their predecessors made. Regional jet pilots are so underpaid that for most of them their day begins riding in a spare jump seat on a commuter flight because they can't afford to live in the major cities where the airlines are based. Then they are paid hourly and only after the doors are closed with the engines started. As soon as the aircraft pulls up to the gate that pay stops. By the way, that hourly wage they are paid is about $20/hr. This all adds up to a yearly salary of around 25,000. Bottom line these highly skilled men and women that thousands trust their lives to every day are making less money than the disconnected, daddy-dependent weanies like yourself who just tuck themselves behind their macbook and complain about subjects they are clearly not educated on. I'm happy to know that if my aircraft takes a flock of seagulls into the engines I will have a man such as Capt. Sully at the controls and not someone like yourself good sir.

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Jmillerusn added these pithy words on Jul 01 10 at 1:29 am