I started out thinking firefighters should all just be paid and it’s unreasonable to expect folks to volunteer. I’ve come back around and think it should be “volunteer or pay”. We obviously need the money for expensive gear and apparatus maintenance. Also it’s helpful to not have to get out of bed in the middle of the night when tomorrow is a work night
On the other hand, I think it’s extremely beneficial to have the resilience of a lot of skilled firefighters in the community. When there’s a big call you want as many people as quickly as possible. I also think it helps with PTSD to be able to just take time off from calls without losing your job. So I think there should be a lot more volunteers and an easier path to getting enough skills to become a volunteer.
In the USA the big cities are fully paid, the suburban areas are a combination, and the rural areas are fully volunteer. I’m in a combination department, where the paid staff handle most of the medical calls and both respond to fire calls. The biggest issue with growing income inequality is folks just don’t have as much free time to volunteer so it’s hard to get enough members to fully staff an apparatus. That means paid staff but those are expensive and require a lot of logistics to maintain.