I don't know if "scam" is exactly the right word, though the sentiment is likely close enough. At those lower levels anyone buying those laptops is going to have much more power than they need. Someone buying a Ryzen 5 4500U to do regular spreadsheets, email, documents, video conferencing, etc. will have ample horsepower. And a Ryzen 5 5500U is not much different. The clocks (base, all-core turbo) might even be lower, though the GPU is slightly better. However, for that kind of user, they might get better battery life, and if they fire up games, a better experience.

This isn't ideal if you upgrade every generation - that wouldn't be worth it. But in those $500-600 laptops, it probably doesn't hurt. I suspect they have Zen 2 chiplet supply and buyers in that price range will be plenty happy. If they really need more CPU power from Zen 3, they could step up to Ryzen 5 5600U. So you need to be better educated on those little nuances, but only if you really need the CPU power.

Presumably anyone buying that doesn't dig into these details reads reviews and looks at the benchmarks on those reviews based on programs they run that are CPU intensive. Otherwise, they probably won't be affected greatly by the difference.

It's not ideal but given supply chain issues, it might be a necessary evil.