One needs to distinguish between quality, consistency, value, and utility.
My parents have a fridge that has been running consistently without issue for 40 years. It is a quality fridge.
What fraction of the fridges made at the same time by the same company are also still running? I can't say for certain but I certainly haven't encountered one since my childhood. They may have been capable of high quality, but not consistently high quality. My parents just lucked out.
The fridge lacks most features of more modern fridges like water filtration or an ice maker, and the design of its shelves weren't particularly ergonomic. A similar fridge would be much cheaper today, at least adjusted for inflation. Put another way, a modern fridge of the same price point would be more valuable.
But the fridge has spent the past 25 years as a backup fridge mostly for longer term storage of bulk items, so the lack of features have not really impacted its utility. Keeping things cold is the primary purpose of a fridge, everything else is a gimmick.
Things have across the board gotten more consistent and cheaper for a given value. A lot of products have suffered feature bloat which detracts from their utility. I don't believe there has been any meaningful shift in quality in the past few decades - for the most part its just people misremembering the past, cherry picking anecdotes, or being deliberately obtuse about how they actually use products and services. Some specific industries may have seen changes, but there is not a bewildering phenomenon across the board.
My parents have a fridge that has been running consistently without issue for 40 years. It is a quality fridge.
What fraction of the fridges made at the same time by the same company are also still running? I can't say for certain but I certainly haven't encountered one since my childhood. They may have been capable of high quality, but not consistently high quality. My parents just lucked out.
The fridge lacks most features of more modern fridges like water filtration or an ice maker, and the design of its shelves weren't particularly ergonomic. A similar fridge would be much cheaper today, at least adjusted for inflation. Put another way, a modern fridge of the same price point would be more valuable.
But the fridge has spent the past 25 years as a backup fridge mostly for longer term storage of bulk items, so the lack of features have not really impacted its utility. Keeping things cold is the primary purpose of a fridge, everything else is a gimmick.
Things have across the board gotten more consistent and cheaper for a given value. A lot of products have suffered feature bloat which detracts from their utility. I don't believe there has been any meaningful shift in quality in the past few decades - for the most part its just people misremembering the past, cherry picking anecdotes, or being deliberately obtuse about how they actually use products and services. Some specific industries may have seen changes, but there is not a bewildering phenomenon across the board.