Eh, I just think this reflects changes in lifestyle and values. You can still buy shoes that are handmade in America and will last decades (like Alden and Allen Edmonds for mens dress shoes), they just cost a fortune and people don't wear those kinds of shoes nearly as much as they did 50 years ago. People today own more shoes, they wear fitness shoes as everyday shoes, styles change constantly, etc. Most people seem to want to buy hundreds of different styles of shoes over their lifetime, so they need to be cheap. There are people who want to own 5 pairs of shoes for their entire life and are willing to pay for the privilege, but they're a vanishingly small minority.

The only way you can possibly justify that sort of view point is the implicit hard cap on what you're willing to pay. You can't find "quality" (in appliances, in shoes, in just about anything) because you're not willing to pay for it.

No way. Price is all about market segmentation, there is little or no correlation with quality. The most expensive built-in refrigerators, for example, have very high failure rates.

After going through 3 washing machines in 9 years, i bought a Speed Queen commercial washer without a cashbox. It is not very pretty, and cost $50 more than the mid-range residential washer that it replaced, has a 5 year warranty, and an expected life of 10-15 years.

This is true for most categories of consumer products. Appliances, shoes, pants, furniture, etc.

You can easily spend 3000$ on a crap fridge.

The problem is optimization as energy efficiency and lifespan for example are often at odds. Further you can measure energy efficiency much easier than lifespan so the incentives get out of whack from what consumers want in favor of what they can measure.

Energy efficiency is one of the most noxious concepts in appliances.

We probably spend exponentially more energy manufacturing, distributing and delivering new appliances that fail due to pointless efficiency engineering than we shave off.