Unless you're a professional athlete, you're never going to get rich working for somebody else. That applies to airline pilots as much as any other working stiff.
Oh so true, if I had known then what I know now.......
Also, Pilot salaries are pretty rubbish as there's little demand for pilots at the moment. Airlines are cutting back, people want cheaper tickets.. not conducive to good salaries.
That is a great deal of it. However, a lot of it has also been pilots as a group letting our own throats be cut. When you don't stand up and say, "hey, I won't accept this bad contract or this pay cut just so I can work more and get that boat", it is easy to divide and conquer. A great deal of anything is negotiation, even in bad times. It is also a fact now that the single greatest expenditure for an airline now is no longer labor, it is fuel.
-----Posted Added-----
By the way, the cost of the lessons aren't the instructor, even though it should be. When you flight instruct, you take your life in your hands :rofl: