From a societal perspective, PhDs and postdocs take part in the economy, they have a job, make money, spend money, produce research sometimes in partnership with the industry, sometimes with immediate applications, sometimes theoretical with applications that will only come decades down the line. There is no reason to set the line at Bachelors, as a society we've found it's best to have a subset of the population go into higher studies. We used to have children participate in the economy 10 to 15 years earlier in fields and factories and it wasn't so good.
From the perspective of the individual, getting a PhD isn't always much longer than getting a Masters, and teaches you skill you will not acquire anywhere else. It also opens the door to research positions that would not be accessible to you without it. And you can have greater expected monetary returns on the medium and long term. I've known a lot of people doing PhDs, a good amount doing it for prestige, because it was the expected next step after a masters. Many others were doing it out of passion, for the freedom to study things they were interested in an amazing environment. So on an individual level many people find it worth it whether their priority is money or intellectual pursuits.
From a societal perspective, PhDs and postdocs take part in the economy, they have a job, make money, spend money, produce research sometimes in partnership with the industry, sometimes with immediate applications, sometimes theoretical with applications that will only come decades down the line. There is no reason to set the line at Bachelors, as a society we've found it's best to have a subset of the population go into higher studies. We used to have children participate in the economy 10 to 15 years earlier in fields and factories and it wasn't so good.
From the perspective of the individual, getting a PhD isn't always much longer than getting a Masters, and teaches you skill you will not acquire anywhere else. It also opens the door to research positions that would not be accessible to you without it. And you can have greater expected monetary returns on the medium and long term. I've known a lot of people doing PhDs, a good amount doing it for prestige, because it was the expected next step after a masters. Many others were doing it out of passion, for the freedom to study things they were interested in an amazing environment. So on an individual level many people find it worth it whether their priority is money or intellectual pursuits.