The 2012-2015 generation 15" were bifurcated in 2013 between integrated and discrete graphics. You need to look at discrete graphics models.
The 2009-2012 generation 15" was the midrange model, and the 17" was the top of the line model, so you need to compare to that model.
The 2018's have introduced new tiers of parts on the super high end (i9 and 4tb ssd) that bump the fully spec'd model up in price. Of course that's getting a lot of attention, but those don't represent the typical builds.
See this chart on historic USD pricing [0] and historic pricing by country [1], and historic 10Y exchange rates (pick any currency) [2]. I did this comparison for someone on reddit [3] with CAD and each of their examples of price increases were 100% accounted for by looking at exchange rates.
[0] https://everymac.com/global-mac-prices/mac-prices-us-usa-uni...
[1] https://everymac.com/global-mac-prices/index-global-internat...
[2] https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=10Y
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8yqu2p/the_prices_of...
The MBP may be expensive but I have never had any issues with my previous MBPs so I feel much more confident buying one. I have a busy week this week with a lot of travel and I have to now make do with this XPS with a half working spacebar as Dell's "ProSupport" can't get me an engineer until Wednesday while I am on an flight! I am just so frustrated right now.
MBP's have their own sets of issues, and aren't flawless either.
I'd argue that is a bad comparison. You're basically judging them both on a vacuum (since one is x amount more expensive but gives me reliability, that X extra is justified). but putting those two devices in context, if we take a look at earlier models, we see that macs have increased enormously in price without providing an equivalent amount of improvements.
For me it's more of a case of a company abusing it's status as leader, while others are unable to provide a real alternative.