Researchers need to afford to live, and that money comes from research grants.

Not really and certainly not directly. Almost all research grants (at least in Canada and the EU) are for the costs of running research, not for the PI’s salary, which their institution pays. I know those two can’t be separated, but the point is still true that most of the grant money that individual researchers apply for can only be spent on conducting research. It is not for them to live, it is for them to do their job.

If this was even a problem, which it isn’t,

What do you mean by this part?

The neoliberal logic consuming academia is bad for academia as a whole, and anyone who can stand to benefit from higher education and/or quality research (i.e., practically everyone everywhere). Almost anyone working on research in academia is severely underpaid and they’re expected to work countless hours for free. Academia is a house of cards help together by the grindset of graduate students and early- or mid-career researchers.

The ways that grunts and funding are allocated are deeply flawed, and fields that aren’t tied to profitable industries (e.g., “life sciences” like biology and chemistry) are severely underfunded. See:

NIMH funding. NSF funding

The only winners in the current system are the profit-driven capitalists who fund research for good PR and ‘passive’ income, and the few others in academia who game funding systems to cash out on shitty dead-end or naively idealist research