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Ashton S. Phillips `

Selected Works

2008

Economics

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If They Could Only Eat Efficiency: How Airline Deregulation And The Bankruptcy Code Joined Forces To Undermine Airline Workers And What Can Be Done About It, Ashton S. Phillips Oct 2008

If They Could Only Eat Efficiency: How Airline Deregulation And The Bankruptcy Code Joined Forces To Undermine Airline Workers And What Can Be Done About It, Ashton S. Phillips

Ashton S. Phillips `

As a species of mass transportation, the airline industry is incapable of making a sustained profit in an unregulated economy. Without regulation, easy access to reorganization and government subsidies only facilitate bloated supply in the air travel market. Bloated supply leads to decreased market price of airfare. This decrease helps consumers, but it doesn't help airlines achieve profitability. Under the current legal scheme, if airlines can't achieve profitability, airline workers will continue to subsidize the industry with radically decreased pay and lost retirement benefits. If Congress increases airline workers' rights in bankruptcy and merger contexts, their positions will be temporarily …