I dont agree with the finest people argument. A high school friend of mine is a pretty senior fire official back east. He was a full scholarship college athelete. They work in freezing cold weather, in much hotter high humidity weather, they do their work in much older mult-story buildings that are far more prone to collapse. In a nutshell they have much tougher jobs. They make much less and can only afford to live in strictly blue collar, lower middle class neighborhoods.