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The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S.
misbach writes "Here is what the 'compensation experts' have to say are the
ten most
overpaid jobs [original article at CBS MarketWatch]. 'Almost no one in America would admit to being
overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
'Fair compensation' is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and
executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't
be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.'"
So much for alwayson-network
AlwaysOn Network Web Site Architect/Administrator
I mean, come on! are we all that afraid that WE'RE overpaid?
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Almost no one in America would admit to being overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
Fair compensation is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.
And while it's easy to argue that chief executives, lawyers and movie stars are overpaid, reality is not that cut and dry.
Corporate attorneys earning $500 an hour and plaintiffs lawyers pocketing a third of a class-action or personal-injury settlement certainly don't go hungry. Yet many local prosecutors and public defenders are hard-pressed to pay off law-school loans.
Hollywood stars, making $20 million a movie or $10 million per TV-season, qualify for many people's overpaid list. But for every one of those actors and actresses, there are a thousand waiting tables and taking bit movie parts or regional theater roles awaiting a big break that never comes.
A lot of people are overpaid because there are certain things consumers just don't want screwed up, said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com. You wouldn't want to board a plane flown by a second-rate pilot or hire a cheap wedding photographer to record an event you hope happens once in your lifetime.
With pro athletes, one owner is willing to pay big money for a star player and then all the other players want to keep up with the Joneses, Coleman said. The art with CEO pay is making sure your CEO is above the median -- and you see where that goes.
What follows is a list of the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S., in reverse order, drafted with input from compensation experts:
10) Wedding photographers
Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding, for what amounts to a one-day assignment plus processing time. Some get $15,000 or more. Yet many mope through the job, bumping guests in their way without apology, with the attitude: I'm just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls.
They must cover equipment and film-development costs. Still, many in major metropolitan areas who shoot two weddings each weekend in the May-to-October marrying season pull in $100,000 for six months' work.
Yet let's face it; much of their work is mediocre. Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds? Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon they're not, but some charge fees as if they're in the same league.
9) Pilots for major airlines
Captains with 12 years of experience earn up to $265 an hour at Delta, United, American and Northwest, which translates to $250,000 a year and more for a job that technology is making almost fully automated.
By comparison, senior pilots at low-fare carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue make about 40 percent less. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The pilot's union is the most powerful in the industry. It commands premium wages as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. Because we entrust our lives to them, consumers accept the excessive sums paid them, when it's airplane mechanics who really hold our fate in their hands.
8) West Coast longshoremen
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Next year, West Coast dockworkers will earn an average of $112,000 for handling cargo, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, their employer. Office clerks who log shipping records into comput
Is it too late to nominate human resource consultant to the list?
Athletes is about supply and demand. There are very few people who can supply an acurate, repeatable 50 yeard pass(or whatever) while 3 or 4 300 pound guys moving as fast as an elk bear down on them.
The company that owns the team makes money from that, and the athlete gets a percentage.
pretty simple actually.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I agree. A major airline pilot holds the lives of a lot of people in their hands. I wouldn't mind if they got paid twice that as long as they were well trained and happy.
Last thing I want is a depressed pilot worrying about bills when the left engine fails. Last thing I want to enter his mind is "fuck it" when that happens.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
But Microsoft is not an underperforming company. Security issues do not matter, the bottom lines does.
A CEO that manages to put 50 billion dollars away for emergences is a damn good CEO.
Now their product may suck, but the product is not the issue here.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I work for an architecture firm that handles airport noise mitigation projects. and I'ved worked with several municipalities with regards to differnt programs accross the country. The majority of these programs are federally funded. I recently saw a job opening for a program director assistant type position paying over 80k a year. For someone not knowing the real requirments of the Job it may sound intence but the job is so easy and so useless. It blows my mind to see how over paid public servants are in the US it is crazy. Not only that but how many uneccessary jobs are created in adminitrative positions. Another area is State education systems and the amount of money paid to administrative professionals when teachers are in short supply and classrooms are under equipped.
Here's the list.
#1 - Professional Athletes
#2 - CEO
#3 - CTO
#4 - CIO
#5 - Chairman of the board
#6 - Generic Executives
#7 - CEO
#8 - CEO
#9 - Guys at think tanks that produce articles like this
#10 - CEO
You gotta be fscking kidding. Did the HR consultants and executive headhunters point out that their own astronomical salaries can't be explained by anyone? Anyone that is, except for other HR consultants and executive headhunters...
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Another thing to consider with airline pilots is the huge investment they have to make for initial training. And if you look at salaries for any pilot who isn't working for a major airline, you will begin to understand the sacrifices that have to be made to make it to the majors.
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Google cache
Does anyone else find it amusing that the site that got /.ed is alwayson-network.com and it is down?
First of all, self-preservation is a fairly strong instinct you can count on in such a situation. As the article rightly points out, you should more fear the mechanic or the overseer to think "fuck it" if he sees that the left wing can fall of in mid-flight any flight now. He will not be on board when that happens. Why not pay him the 250K and the pilot a 100?
OK, I get harshing on most of the others, but c'mon, skycaps? Let's smack down a bunch of guys who make $30k a year standing in the exhaust-drenched air at airport dropoff points, dealing with irate travellers, lugging overpacked suitcases around to the cries of 'Be careful with that!'...so they make tips, too--you think the surly, don't-give-a-damn ones are the ones raking in $300/day in tips? Right.
Saying it takes less brains than stuffing fast food in a bag is rather insulting to skycaps, too--does this guy honestly think that a skycap can just kinda traipse around with a cart full of luggage, darned if he cares what happens to it? (This even without taking the crazy new security measures into account--I'm sure that makes their jobs oh-so-easy these days...)
Pro atheletes? Sure. High-end real estate agents? Yep. Skycaps? That's...kinda reaching for a top ten list...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
What staggered me about the list was that CEO's as a body weren't included. Yes, the CEO's of underperforming companies are horribly overpaid, but you can't tell me that Michael Eisner actually did work equal in value to $700 *million*. Honestly, I rather doubt that its possible for anyone to do work worth 700 million... Eisner is on the high side, but all corporate executives tend to earn well beyond what they are worth.
You want to know why were in a recession? Its simple, really. The people earning that money don't spend it. Not because they're malicious, but because you *can't* spend $700M, not unless you're buying solid gold toilets every day, or something equally silly. Since the money doesn't get spent, it simply vanishes from the economy. The truth is that trickle down would work, if the upper 1% spent all (or even most) of their money. Since they can't, trickle down is doomed to fail, as is the economy unless money starts flowing *out* of Eisner et al, and into the general economy...
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
As fast as an elk? Is that some kind of Canadian measure of velocity? Can you get a speeding ticket for going 2 elks in a school zone? What is the speed of light in elks?
Wedding photographers! My god what a racket. I worked for a online wedding photography company and the top photographers contracted with us made $40-60k PER EVENT. One photographer I won't name routinely charged $40k for events that he didn't even bother to show up at. He sent an assistant. I am not making that up.
And what do you get for that price? That's right. NOTHING. They show up and shoot. But they make you pay for the prints. >$10 a pop. And if you want an album? Well...thats gonna cost extra.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Too bad the computer is what does the major work now on any modern jet-liner. You don't even need the pilot to land it anymore... Basically they are there as a backup to the computer system now.
And pretty soon, with a few more advances in AI, we'll also have computers with the attitude of "oh, fuck it" when the left engine fails.
do() || do_not();
Oh, I don't know, charge $3 for tickets and $1 for cokes, and let the idiots on the field make as much as schoolteachers or cops? Sounds fair to me.
They ignored how pilots actually get paid. It is based ENTIRELY on length of service with their current airline. When they start. it is around $13,000 a year (yes, really). And don't forget they often have to pay back for flight school. The longer they serve, they more they get paid as they move up ("seniority"). Their career can be instantly over failing the six month physical/medical. And that isn't failing like ordinary folk would. The health standards are significantly higher. Oh, and if they have to leave an airline while earning $250,000 a year and start at another, they really do start at $13,000.
The pay is definitely broken, but it isn't really apparent how to fix it. If they were paid on timely arrivals or lack of crashes, then there would be an incentive to buck the system to improve those in dangerous ways. They can hardly be blamed for maintenance, weather, in flight emergencies with passengers or any other "performance related" means. So seniority/length of service it remains.
So why do pilots fight so hard for their pay. Simple. When you have been making $13,000 a year and growing slowly until you eventually hit bigger numbers many decades later, you feel like you have earned it. And all the pilots who have put in a decade at low pay don't want the future rewards they have sacrificed for taken away. You should also be aware that very few pilots earn those big bucks.
Check out the series of articles "Ask the Pilot" on Salon which goes into way more detail. Quite frankly you would be insane to become a pilot for the money.
It's a canadian unit of velocity AND mass. (So now that I think about it it's a unit of momentum). It's defined as the momentum of your average elk running at the average maximum elk speed. A football player with all his gear does about 0.2 elk.
8) West Coast longshoremen
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Maybe they make too much money. But ports shut down because of a lock-out, not a strike. Everyone that writes about this and wants to paint them in a bad light casually fails to mention that. If the Pacific Maritime Association feels that the Longshoremen's Union has too much of a stranglehold on the ports, perhaps they should consider that the PMA has too much of a stranglehold on the ports. Monopolies suck. Amen. One monopoly has managed to take money from the other monopoly. You think consumer prices would fall if the PMA managed to break the union?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Too bad the 250K a year is a myth, only the most senior pilots at the major airlines make that much money. The average co-pilot for the majors makes about $30k, while an average line pilot makes $45-55K.
The commuters such as ASA, and Comair start their co-pilots at $18.5K, and their average pilost make about $30-40K, with the most senior making close the 6 figure.
Note that this is after a pilot invests nearly $50K geting a Bachlors degree, and another $50-60K in flight training. Also the pilots generally spend 2-3 years making just better than McJob wages, doing flight training themselves or other jobs.
Corporate pilots don't get as high pay wise, but they can move up more quickily to their highest pay scale if they are good.
"Overpaid" is an opinion. This article acts as if "overpaid" can be objectively defined. You may not think sports stars are worth it (hey, I sure don't), but apparently everyone else does and is voting with their dollars. If you want these people's salaries to be "corrected," you're going to have to sway public opinion.
Honestly, I'm so tired of reading articles by people who never understood the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve.
Great reading on the subject from Walter Williams.
I don't think the sports stars should make that much money. Sometimes I even resent them. But for me to decree that they're "overpaid" means I think I have the right to prohibit thousands of people from purchasing sports tickets. I don't have the right to that kind of control over people's lives any more than I have the right to choose their religion.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds?
It takes more than just snapping photos to be a wedding photographer. It's like being a drummer: Do your job well and no one will notice, but mess up and you'll catch hell. I guarantee you can tell the difference between a professional wedding photographer's photographs and some doofus with a disposable. Wedding Photographers are also not only working against the clock, but they only get one day.
Articles like these with the lack of repsect for profession's intricacies as are borderline offensive. Just because the author doesn't see what the big deal is is no reason to bash it.
Unless the guy making the decision and the guy parting with the money are not the same guy. If the board of directors of a company is deciding how to pay the CEO more (because the CEO is on THEIR board of directors) this isn't supply and demand - it's called "milking the system".
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Of course everyone should sacrifice... yeah right.
The Red Cross needs good management and a good CEO. Take a look at the amount of money the company handles, and the stuff they do around the world. They are equal to a multinational corporation. Now, they need people with the ability to lead a company that size. In order to attract these people, they have to offer a salary. Now in order to get the people needed into these positions, they need to pay a competitive salary. Some guy off the street being the CEO of the Red Cross for 50K a year might look good, but unless he's independently wealthy and doing it as a humanitarian effort, he's not going to do the job well.
CEOs actually do alot for companies, it may look like a cushy job, but there is alot of work going on there.
I mean, compare it with software development. If you have a project going on, you want a good software dev team to work on it. Sure, you are going to "piss away cash" to pay their salaries, but you could always just farm out the job overseas. Anyone here will tell you, the farmed out code is going to be subpar. If you farm out the CEO of the Red Cross, the result is going to be subpar.
It is the samething with teachers. Everyone will complain that teachers are underpaid. Yet, I don't see anyone ponying up more tax dollars to pay for them.
The gap between top and bottom salaries is at a historic all time high. The powerful simply bent the rules so they gain more than their fair share at the expense of all of the rest of us. This cripples our economy as it's a clear disincentive to labor. At the current rate of mismanagement, it surely won't be too long before the whole rotten house of cards collapses again. Excessive affluence is a sure sign of a corrupt society and I, for one, wish there was even some justice in America. Really, the real enemy isn't overseas, they inhabit the top floors of our institutions.
Words to men, as air to birds.
There is a helluva lot of training and responsibility to running the aircraft, to be there, and do whatever has to be done in the event of ANY malfunction, no matter what. Sure, I can see its all automated. I'll betcha they could take a whole planeload of passengers from one airport to another by remote control without a pilot at all in the plane.
Now, try it if the plane has major malfunctions midflight.. say part of the fuselage gets caught up in the slipstream, the hydraulics jam, some kook gets onboard and causes sabotage. Now, without a knowledgeable individual onboard who knows how to handle any emergency, what's the chance of getting back to earth alive?
On top of that, I consider these guys face a major health problem, by the nature of their job which requires MUCH sitting. Sitting through training. Sitting in the cockpit. All this sitting... guess what happens to the old cardiovascular system? The blood will start pooling in the legs. The heart is not a suction pump. It won't pull the blood up. You HAVE to walk around in order to get the blood back up, by way of contractions of the calf and thigh muscles, to squeeze the blood back up. The eventual end to this is a condition like phlebitis, where blood pools in the legs, forms clots, which eventually break loose, shooting up the leg venuous system, up to the heart, over to the lung, where they become trapped forming a pulmonary embolism. Not a fun thing.
I am not an airline pilot, nor are any of my family or friends... but I did consider it as a possible career option and when I realized I would have to spend a large portion of my live confined to a cubbyhole that would make a restroom stall large by comparison, I reconsidered. I feel these guys earn their pay, not only for their skills, but as compensation for the wear and tear it puts on them.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Wedding photographer.
Surely the most overpaid job in the world is supermodel photographer.
I would gladly do the job for ten grand, so long as I can pay in instalments...
What is the speed of light in elks?
Zero. Elks are opaque.
The money that doesn't get spent gets put into some sort of financial instrument, which then is put back into the economy in the form of money that can be used as capital. It certainly doesn't just 'dissapear' unless the owner keeps it all in larg bills under their mattress.
This is why estate taxes originally came about. The government was extremely worried that a de-facto aristocracy would form out of the money that Industrialists were accumulating. So in order to prevent assets from endlessly collecting interest, they decreed that a large percentage of an individual's wealth would return to society upon death. This would also ensure that, at some point, SOMEone would have to work to bring more money in. Not exactly what one would call a fair system, but since Rockefellers and Kennedys do not own GE and Microsoft today, I would have to call it a partial success.
Now just recently estate taxes were repealed by the fiscal conservatives. Will this finally tip the scale to the point where wealth can endlessly create more wealth, so meritous, hard-working individuals like Ally Hilfiger can entertain us with their priviledge? Our children will find out!
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
"Did you watch the game on Sunday? Wow!" mindless sheep.."
I was under the impression that I enjoyed watching sports purely as a form of entertainment (and that entertainment includes discussing sports with friends). Now, through the insight of your post, I realize that I have simply been following the herd. I shall hereby resign my fan status, and retire to Slashdot, where I will post only things that will be accepted as mainstream geek.
Whew, I almost fell in with those sports fan sheep who always say things because they think that's what others want to hear. Good thing I'm away from that and safe here on Slashdot.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
A friend of mine's Dad is a flight instructor, and tells about how there are a lot of things a pilot had to do to get a license that they don't now. They figured out, that by forcing unexperienced pilots to go into spins kills more people, then the number of people who are on a plane that go into spins.
A modern airplane can be built so it's nearly impossible to stall. So it doesn't have nearly so many of the problems it used to have, and thus pilots really to know as much or be as technically skilled as they used to due to modern Engineering.
All that said, I'm still aware of several scenerios where a pilot saved people by doing something deemed "impossible", by everyone I know who knows anything about planes. I think the FAA has new training due to a plane crash that happened near Siox City, Iowa. A guy was steering a plane using the flaps in a way that wasn't supposed to work. It was supposed to tear the plane apart. However, that was the only control left on the plane that worked. I think 90 people lived (of the 170). I saw film of it, it was terrifing.
Finally, pilots don't get enough time off. They should get paid that much for how much time they spend away from their families, and the hours they put in.
Kirby
Are you guys kiddig me? Look, the truth of the matter is that nearly all CEO's who are getting more than $1/2 Mil each year are grossly overpaid! And that's just about all of them! Next are all the wonderful Demicrooks and RepubliCONS in CONgress. They are all basically in the deep pockets of the cheating and lying CEO's! and don't give a rip who they cheat or steal from nor who they are lying to as long as they have their campagin warchests filled up to stay in office. If the middle class collapses in this country, and there are signs that they are based on economic control and whose got it and wealth distribution, something gonna blow up really big! (IMHO).
That's the big myth behind the "overpaid washed up athletes" claim. There are not plenty of guys who could score 6 points and three rebounds against NBA players. The European leagues are full of very good former college stars who couldn't do it.
Out of almost 300 Million Americans, only a couple hundred are good enough to be benchwarmers in the NBA. Fewer than ever these days, because there are so many good players from the rest of the world now entering the league. You could easilly take the worst team in the NBA (the Clippers at the moment, I suspect) and mop up the floor with any college team in the US, or have a winning record against the pros in the Italian League. They may seem to suck in contrast to the Tim Duncans and Kevin Garnetts, but don't let that fool you into thinking they are anything less than elite athletes.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No kidding. My friend got married last spring and in his wedding the Photographer was a really horrid woman (late 30's early 40's). She did EVERYTHING that was mentioned in this article. She shoved people out of the way, she was rude, she hogged all the good pictures to herself. All while spending the entire evening bitching to anybody she possibly could about how digital cameras were ruining her business.
You know what though, SHE was the one ruining her business, not the digital camers. You have to adapt with the times, and you have to adapt to the situation, and being a horrid cold bitch is not the way to sell yourself to potential future customers. You can't be complacent, no matter who you are or what job you do, times change.
You want to take good wedding pictures? Hire a local college student who is going to school for Photography. You'll get a great price, great pictures, and the student will get some extra money for beer and some pictures for their art classes. I can tell you my college friends who were photography majors sure would've appreciated the work!!
Bryan
That may be the case, but from what I understand it's rather difficult to become a pilot in the military. For one thing, your uncorrected vision has to be 20/20 or better, which eliminates a whole bunch of people. By the way, as I understand it, "uncorrected" means just that: no corrective surgery, no glasses, no contacts.
If you want to become a pilot through civilian channels, you do indeed have to make large sacrifices. The training is quite expensive and quite extensive. You have to train for your private pilot's license, your commercial license, your twin engine rating, your flight instructor's license, and then you have to work as an instructor to build enough flight time (at least a thousand hours or so) before anyone (even cargo haulers) will consider you. And when you are finally hired, you won't be hired by the majors -- you'll be hired by the regionals at best. And those guys start off at about $30K per year. Captains in the regionals make around $70K per year. That's for putting in 12-16 hour days, with a "home base" that may change on a yearly basis and which may be quite far from home.
It's ironic, really, because the kind of flying the regional guys do is harder than the flying done by the majors. The regionals typically operate turboprop equipment that flies in the 15,000 to 25,000 foot altitude range, where weather is much more of a factor than the 30,000 to 40,000 foot range the majors fly in. The regionals tend to fly into smaller airports that have fewer or older navigational aids and which also tend to be in areas of more dangerous terrain. And their equipment isn't as good as the equipment the majors fly, so icing (for example) is more of a problem.
If it were up to me, the guys in the regional airlines would be making more than the guys in the majors, simply because their job is harder.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Somewhere there ought to be a comparable list: jobs you assume are worked by well-heeled professionals, but that are actually basically full of blue collar people who're doing it for other reasons. Pilots are there because they like the work. It sure as heck isn't the money. Paramedics -- you think they're in it for the money? They get hardly anything for the job they do, those people are in it for something else.
(I'd rather read my imaginary article, frankly. This one's just a bitchy, demeaning piece of pop tabloid crap.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Everytime I hear the argument that Pro_Athletes are over paid it drives me crazy. What no one seems to realise is that pro athletes are nothing but advertsing draws for their owners. They are paid 10Million a year because the owner is hoping that that one player will contribute more than 10 million in advertising dollars. The better/bigger the players the more people go to the games. The more people at the games the more ad signs cost in the stadium, the more ticket sales, more tv viewers, more tv money, more radio money, more merchandising.
It has NOTHING to do with an athletes ability to throw a ball, it has EVERYTHING to do with how good the fans think he is, therefore how much money they will spend on the team.
Its nothing but business. You can complain all day long how fat and old XXX basketplayer is, But if he fills seats and turns on TV's, then thats all that matters.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Airline Pilots are limited by the FAA to like 100 hours a month and 8 hours flying time per day w/o a 12 hour off time. Senior Captains often can ick long trips where they get the 8 hours in on 1 flight. Jr Pilots have to make multiple takeoffs and landings which at busy airports and with weather can be very stressful. Delays due to weather don't count towards the 12hr max duty day, so there can be some LONG days. Right now, airlines are really getting some concessions (S$$$) out of pilots, who not only have to worry about terrorists but thier own CEOS stabbing them! Senior Captains with 15-20 yrs experience who fly the "heavies" like 747s get a nice 6 figure income, the guys and gals flying for Southwest make about 60K. Seniority is the key, as well as getting trained on lots of different aircraft in order to move up. Often a captain of a small plane will get trained on something else and move up, but he is back to being co-pilot or flight engineer and maybe even a pay cut until s/he is certified on the new equipment. It's not an easy job, you have life and death over a lot of people and have to deal with a lot of Gov't red tape as well as other things. These guys earn the checks!
I'm upset that us yanks are still using Imperial Elk instead of Metric.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
One minor correction, Pilot error is not the most dangerous thing about flying, Gravity is!..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I'm a flight instructor, and I'd like to respond to some of your post.
First, the fact that most accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to pilot error is no surprise. The word "most" implies a ratio. As the systems on airplanes become more reliable, and procedures more conservative, that leaves pilots who are getting both better and worse to make up the rest of the percentages.
Pilots are much more educated these days in subjects as diverse as aerodynamics, systems, physiology and crew resource management, etc.
At the same time, some of the skills previously taught are not now mandatory. The spins you mentioned, for instance. It used to be mandatory that you gave students spin training, and that CFIs (Certificated Flight Instructors) had to demonstrate spins to get their licenses. As your buddy's dad noted, however, there were more people being killed by the training than by accidents. I had a student inadvertantly enter a spin during slow flight who froze on the controls for roughly two turns until I was able to get him to let go. So I easily understand the now lesser requirements. Having said that, I and many others still give spin training. Most students stare agog at the rotating earth on their first spin rather than do anything constructive, so I think it's unfair not to get them through that initial "shock and awe" before sending them out into the world where, as shown above, they might enter that situation inadvertantly.
So we're growing them smarter; but at the same time, we may not be arming them with everything we used to. Having said that, spin training isn't necessarily useful to a DC-10 driver.
As for aircraft design... you can build airplanes that are very stable, very smart, very fault tolerant and forgiving, etc.; but every piece of that perfect airplane adds complexity and problems of its own. For instance, the Airbus that crashed at the Paris airshow because the computer entered "land" mode and wouldn't allow the pilot to exceed certain parameters in his go-around attempt. In 1994(?) there was a Fed-Ex DC-10 crew that was attacked by a disgruntled employee who struck all 3 crewmembers with a framing hammer. They disabled him by initially performing a split-S maneuver that no computer would have allowed. The attacker wanted to fly the airplane into the Fed-Ex hub in Memphis and would likely have succeeded if the pilot had been unable to fly the airplane beyond its operational parameters. History has many more such stories of times when doing something the airplane wasn't supposed to do saved the day. You don't want a computer to control everything. There needs to be context for actions; and currently, only humans can really analyze that.
Also plan on getting rid of anything smaller than a passenger jet, if you're going to require the same systems that those high-end airplanes carry. They're simply not feasible in terms of weight and price for smaller airplanes, though that is slowly changing.
In the Sioux City crash, the pilot was using differential thrust from the engines to control the airplane. If you increase thrust on the right wing, it travels a bit faster and produces more lift, which causes it to raise a bit and the airplane to turn. The sweepback angle on the wing enhances this also, as the forward wing (the one on the outside of the turn) is effectively longer than the other wing. (That's a lot easier to illustrate visually.) Anyhow, the Sioux City incident is a perfect example of how necessary the pilots are.
Finally, I know of jobs that pay a lot less and are more demanding on average. For instance, the dishwasher at your local restaurant works a lot harder day in and day out than the airline pilot who flew you to Cleveland last week. The reason we don't pay the dishwasher 100K per year (aside from the now exorbitant $1000 price for chicken-fried steak) is that there won't ever be a dishwashing emergency that will cost the lives of hundreds of people if not dealt with in the next 20 seconds.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!