Do you actually know any nurses, because I doubt it from your description.
My gf is an EMT, and two of my sisters are nurses. Here's the actuality:
Nurses are paid OK. They work long stressful jobs with severe penalties, both moral and civil, for screwing anything up. There is a high chance of serious injury, particularly while trying to move or assist fat or obese patients, of which there are more and more due to the obesity epidemic and diabetes. Working as a nurse or EMT means physical labor involving long periods of standing on your feet; little control over when your shift ends, no matter what the schedule says; having to work very early morning or very late evening shifts to get 100% coverage; and very little flexibility during the day. You know how you can run small errands and do little errands with your computer? They, for the most part, can't.
They also have ongoing education and certification requirements that they most often pay for out of pocket.
Finally, being an EMT, paramedic, or nurse means not only developing an intimate relationship with bodily fluids of all sorts but seeing on a daily basis the worst things that can happen to a human being. From mangled bodies from car accidents to cancer, to diseases (including those that require hazmat suits and offer severe risks if anything goes wrong), to infected wounds, to septic shock or heart failure or stroke, they see all the things that can go wrong with a human.
So yes, they're fairly well paid, but I wouldn't describe their actual jobs as anything like "cushy".