Because modern life is radically more complicated than humans can naturally deal with.
Your average peasant for millenia didn't need to understand Information security to avoid getting phished, didn't need to understand compounding interest for things like loans and saving for retirement (they'd just have kids and pray enough of them survive), didn't need to have some kind of mental model for the hordes of algorithms deployed against us for the express purpose of taking all of our available attention (a resource that people before a couple decades ago had so much excess of that boredom was a serious concern) for the express purpose of selling it to people who want to extract any dollar you may have access to, did not need to understand spreadsheets(!), etc etc etc etc
Like, being productive in modern society is complicated. That's what education is for.
We've put into place a context for intellectual achievement at scale. Why shouldn't status be apportioned to someone who is recognized by a panel of peers and teachers to have useful insight into their field?
Because many "fields" in colleges are not useful.
Decoupling working from living: means only intrinsically valuable things get worked on. No more working a 9-5 at a scam call center or figuring out how to make people click on ads. There is ONLY BENEFIT (to everyone) from giving labor such leverage.
Not every job needs to or should even exist: everyone having a job isn't utopia. Utopia is being free to choose what you work on. This directs market value for labor to go up. Work that needs to get done will be aligned with financial incentives (farmers, janitors, repair industries would soar to new heights).
UBI is a necessary and great idea: A bottom floor to capitalism means we all can stand up and lift this sinking ship.