Why? Reaganomics. It's the late 1980s--they shut down the plant and shipped your job overseas. Real wages flatten and stay flat. But not to worry! The products you love are now cheaper (albeit slightly crappier). You buy the cheaper thing more out of necessity than real "choice," since Baumol's cost disease is making everything but consumer goods outrageously expensive. There are more expensive versions of some products, but they're often just overpriced faux-luxury trim on the same junk. Luxury goods stay good, since the wealthy have several orders of magnitude more than you ever will in 1000 lifetimes. There used to be...what did they used to call it? A "middle class"...