I think even more accurate is that quality/longevity and price are almost completely decoupled.
Spending more doesn’t guarantee higher quality it mostly gets you exceptional graphic design and deftly nested packaging that makes you feel good when you open it.
But it’s not like all the cheap stuff is better. A Rolex is an incredible engineering marvel and is in fact very high quality and durable. So are Festool tools, and so on.
But like so is G-shock and a random and difficult to pin down subset of Harbor Freight.
The broader point is that none of this really makes a fucking difference most of the discussion is just people preening about their choices instead of admitting it’s mostly a roll of the dice.
And the old stuff wasn’t “better” it was just different. When I was a kid in the 70’s and 80’s garages were full of shoddy junk from the 50’s and 60’s. That stuff is just all gone right now.