Academics really need to stop imagining that grad students would just be starting lucrative careers if they didn't go to grad school/that there are all these good jobs outside of academia

(same with journalists, evidently!)

Love being told if I don't get a tt job, my ph.d. was probably a waste of time and I could have been what exactly? Kept my hourly wage job?

Got in even more debt to go to law school so I could work at a corporate firm and be miserable/try to be ethical and be in the same job situation but with three times the debt? What do you think people's options are?

At minimum you need a grad degree for anything! Some of them are better bets than others, but also involve very heavy debt loads for a less and less of a sure thing.