“Simplifying” English spelling would cause more problems than it solves. Even among American speakers, there are a plethora of ways to pronounce various words; include English, Australian, etc., and any phonetic system will be even more unintelligible than the spoken systems.
Right. If you want to find out the correct way to pronounce words in English, just come here to northern New England. Every other way is wrong. But don’t listen to those Vermont natives. They talk funny. They say things like “caows”.
“;^)