With all of the fees airlines are charging, it's pretty clear that our money isn't being invested back into the companies, but lining the pockets of the executives and helping the numbers look good for shareholders (who are historically morons if you look at how poorly airlines have done in "increasing shareholder value"). It's a pity that while executives are criminally liable for misrepresenting financial statements, they have no liability when it comes to people dying because they were too cheap to properly run the airline safely.

Airline employees have gotten some of the worst of it, since the cuts have been so steep. But in some sense, they're lucky, they still have their job in their industry. Take a look at the Rust Belt areas of the country to see where jobs have been shipped overseas in bulk, and those people were reduced to working for Walmart, if they could find work at all. However, the difference in ringing things up at a Walmart and flying a plane on the cheap is that the latter puts the lives of people at risk. Flying cheap is just another aspect of a broad cheapening that's affected every sector of our economy, that's driven by greed and a perverse but pervasive message that we are to expect everything to be cheaper and cheaper. It just happens to be one with the most dire consequences.

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