I read On the Road many years ago and observed that the Beatnik culture is almost identical to most spoiled adolescents in college: Road trips, drugs, sloth, casual sex, a disdain for work and an air of moral superiority.
These things were extremely taboo in the early sixties. Today not so much...
I get the impression that you had to have well-off and indulgent parents to be a properly disdainful beatnik. Having to actually work to feed yourself took too much time away from being "cool".