A company offering an actual-priced printer, with actual-priced ink would go out of business fast: almost nobody would buy the expensive, unsubsidized printers.
I currently have a $60 printer which does just fine. Previously I had a >$200 fancy HP printer, but I got rid of it when I found out it would "expire" my ink. As someone that prints maybe a handful of concert tickets a year, that is bullshit.
I got a B/W Samsung laser for 80€, which printed for 3 years despite default toner that comes with the printer isn't even full capacity. After that I got a renewed toner for 28€, still prints.
Cousin bought a Xerox B/W laser for about 55€ last month and it comes with Wi-fi built-in. Renewed toner is also in the 30€ area. That's how cheap they are now.
But I don't agree with the article completely though, nowadays if you need colour printing (for documents, I wouldn't print photographs on a laser, it's still cheaper to print them in a shop) as well regularly, get a colour laser. It's 50-80$€ more then B/W (from 150 up) and you're also set for years.
Either you leave it plugged in, and it occasionally does a nozzle cleaning operation, using up ink each time, or you leave it unplugged, and it gets clogged if you don't use it regularly.
Granted, it does take longer than 6 months to empty an ink jet cartridge just through cleaning, but for an infrequently used printer, cleaning will use up a significant portion of your ink.
Either way the per ml price of ink is several orders of magnitude below even refilled cartridges, and since it's legit Epson ink, (hopefully) it won't screw up the print head.
Of course, the printer purchase price reflects the actual cost of making the printer as there is no cross subsidy but I am happy to pay 250 euros for the printer, in the knowledge that I won't be paying extortionate amounts for cartridges every month or two.
I also like not throwing out the used cartridges which always seems a huge waste.