As an example, I'll use flash memory devices (USB thumb drives). I used to consult for a firm that assembled these things as part of their business for use by corporate customers. They would buy flash memory chips from various chip vendors. You can, if you wish, purchase flash memory chips that have passed stringent tests. Or chips that have been rejected by other OEM's. Guess which ones cost more? Some of my client's customers demanded the absolute cheapest possible chips. So my client provided them (with warnings). The failure rates for the cheapest of the cheap could reach as high as 20% in a batch in our testing. The clients didn't care. Sadly, ALL the clients that didn't care were American companies. Not even mainland Chinese companies would use them.
There's a few interesting channels on youtube that deconstruct various products (from shoes to toasters) to see how high quality they are. It's quite instructive at how much different price points can differ (sometimes from the same company).
Buying quality is a tedious task and requires to invest your time. Buying expensive is by no means a guarantee for quality, think of the many re-labelers.
Deregulation was great because it opened up the market to more competition, and that led to lower prices. A true race to the bottom. Turns out, most people don't want to pay for more leg room, better service, more on time flights. They want the cheapest flight they can get (unless their company is footing the bill).
So whenever I hear someone complain about leg room on a flight, or not enough overhead stowage, or crappy food, I think about the choices ticket buyers have made over the last 40 years.
Price is almost always the first and most influential factor in a sale. Quality (whether actual quality or the illusion of quality) is usually way down the list of factors.
[0]https://gizmodo.com/traveling-in-a-boeing-747-in-the-1970s-w...
Right now, I can book BOS->SAN->BOS for $945 in first class. Granted, COVID is happening, but I've bought that ticket in the past, pre-COVID for that same $1000 +/- a small margin.
I call this the Decontenting of America.
I totally disagree with your assessment. 20 years ago it was harder to find quality products than it is today. I am a person that buys "quality", I support local & US companies whenever I can. There are so many excellent boutique companies for just about everything outside of shitty mass produced electronics. I just do not see your world at all, but then again, I don't mistake garbage retailers and company branding for quality.
In general I find the degree of belligerent defensiveness in your post inexplicable given the topic at hand.
Modern metallurgy is soooo much more consistent for equivalent or better outputs though. Thanks to modern electronic process control the dumbest dolts on 3rd shift in some factory in China can hit the spec they were told to hit and they can hit it for pennies.
Plastics, electronics, mechanical assemblies, hydraulics, everything, same story. Modern automation and process control has made the "high quality" of decades past something attainable on a budget.
So your Harbor Freight junk will generally hold its own against grandpa's Craftsman and Snap-On but it won't look good or feel good doing it and you white box wheel bearing will roll your tractor along just as well as the one it replaces.
I'm curious what Sears tools you considered high quality.
My computer's from 2000s still work as does various 20+ year old CRTs. What products are you talking about? The nylon clothes that last forever, the food that doesn't go bad and has higher nutrition, the cheap micro USB that came with the thing that broke but the cable still works 9 years later?
What are these same price low quality goods you are plagued with?
A poster said we should buy quality and another answered its no longer possible unless custom-manufactured. I fear thats true: to few bought quality to be a sustainable living for the producers.
It used to be possible to pay somewhat more to buy good quality products that would last for years or decades (obviously not for electronics) but today the manufacturers of these goods charge the same prices but their products are no better than Amazon/Walmart-grade junk available for half the price.
The contemporary marketplace is littered with companies that used to produce high quality goods but are now selling away their former reputation to move overpriced garbage. See everything from Cole Haan (shoes) to Sears.
And frankly, I do blame Americans for this. American refusal to enforce anti-monopoly laws, combined with the American legal concept of management fiduciary duty belonging exclusively to shareholders, provides no market incentive for manufacturers to produce quality goods and indeed obligates companies to rip off their customers by selling low-quality goods at inflated prices.