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Originally Posted by ImperialPanda
....supply & demand....Competitive pressure is what keeps the market running. It's good. Keeps things efficient.
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I don't think the present system involves competitive pressure. It's more like a combine of companies that keeps wages low and does not reward merit. If anything, it would tend to drive good people out of the business. It does serve to keep costs low, though, at least for the producers. Whether the producers (and agencies) end up skimming more profit for themselves and not either lowering prices or passing profits to the creative people, I don't know.
My opinion is that the system does not seem to recognize the real worth of the seiyuus to a project. I think a good seiyuu adds value to a show that causes more people to buy the DVD. For instance, I think that Saitou Chiwa was important to the great popularity of Hazuki in Tsukuyomi. She made the character more attractive than a more average seiyuu would have. But I think the companies do not realize this, and just take the seiyuus for granted. Even the audience might not realize it, but it affects their buying behavior anyway.
Seiyuus differ from animators, in my opinion, since seiyuus' voices differ more than animators' drawings do. Animators have to draw to a standard determined by the director, character designer and key animators. The seiyuu can be more individual, and therefore is less easily replaced. So that means they should cost more, by supply and demand.
I do agree with the general point, however, that just because you are good at something doesn't mean you should be able to make a living at it. There has to be a demand for what you can do, and a small enough supply that the price people are willing to pay is high enough for you to live on. The problem in this case is that the companies (producers and agents) have the power to control the seiyuu market, and seiyuus are not able to compete in a truly free market.
The point about seiyuu being seen as more low-life than live actors may be true, too -- although of course the universal tradition is that actors of all kinds are low-lifes. It's probably also that we pay so much attention to faces that actors whose faces you can see seem more important.