It really depends on what you value to be "worth it".
If you value the end goal of becoming a professor, you'd agree the Phd is "worth it"; perhaps this provides a career-oriented perspective.
But consider the other values:
If you want to explore a novel, foundational (perhaps theoretical) area of the field, academia represents a good venue. The journey is what is "worth it" to the value of intellectual curiosity.
Similarly, if you value gaining extreme depth in a narrow topic area to the end of advancing that topic area, academia enables an appropriate level of focus for that.
Blanket statements of what academia is useful for are biased by individual values, and are thus generally unhelpful. Not everyone pursues a path for its ends or career utility.
If you value the end goal of becoming a professor, you'd agree the Phd is "worth it"; perhaps this provides a career-oriented perspective.
But consider the other values:
If you want to explore a novel, foundational (perhaps theoretical) area of the field, academia represents a good venue. The journey is what is "worth it" to the value of intellectual curiosity.
Similarly, if you value gaining extreme depth in a narrow topic area to the end of advancing that topic area, academia enables an appropriate level of focus for that.
Blanket statements of what academia is useful for are biased by individual values, and are thus generally unhelpful. Not everyone pursues a path for its ends or career utility.