I think you'd still be faced with a lack of truck-driver-to-research-scientist pipeline. There are already a lot of people that are qualified, or if not they're close to qualified, to be in these research roles so that if a lot more funding went toward these areas it'd still be hard for someone making the move from much more unrelated industries and educations at later points in their lives would still be at a disadvantage. The children of these people, given a good education along with having easier access to higher education, might have an easier time getting into these positions. But it seems like there'd be a labor shortage gap for those that aren't remotely qualified for a research position now.

This also seems to ignore that research science itself is increasingly becoming automated, and such positions that are less efficient on the dollar per fundamental insight scale may disappear at around the same time as our hypothetical truck driver's.

Personally, I think that we as a culture need to change our thought processes on the necessity of everyone doing work. So what if some people just end up in the sitting around watching Netflix all the time category? Not everyone's going to do that, there are a ton of different outlets I would pursue if I didn't have to worry about working or money. And they're mostly things that I'm only money limited on because if I didn't work and pursued these things then I wouldn't be able to eat or have a place to sleep.

Work on giving people quality educations and the open-ended opportunities to explore, play, and pursue, and I think we'd all be surprised at what people will end up doing with their time.