But also, quality has diminishing returns in basically every category. At the low end, it's extremely efficient to improve the quality of your product and charge a bit more. At the high end, you can't make any more inexpensive moves to set yourself apart, so you use higher end materials, fabrication methods, and workers.
To be honest, I did abandoned school as quickly as I could and my math skills aren't that of my peers, but 5x times as much is pretty "much more expensive" for most people out there, not sure how someone can say else with a straight face. $100 vs $500 would easily be a "Can I eat properly the entire month?" decision for a lot of the population.
The right comparison is "For people who can spend $500 on a pair of pants, what is the financial difference between $100 and $500?"
For most of that subpopulation, not much.
I'm seeing a range of around $33 to $60 at the moment, with other brands dipping under $30.
Ron Johnson of Apple Store fame famously tried to change this when he became JCP's CEO and...barely lasted a year!
Maybe there was some significant quality degradation. They recently added elastic fibers to like their entire khaki shorts line, which makes them dramatically less durable. I bet they did the same here.
If you're seeing 501s that are $30 and 501s that are $100 I can promise you there's $70 of difference between them, having shopped at WalMart and at flagship stores on 5th Ave - basically every "trusted" brand in a big box store is cutting every corner possible to be there and either the product suffers for it or the people are exploited in making it. Fast, cheap or good: pick 1 and a half.
Median weekly salary is 1159 according to BLS. That’s 7% of weekly salary vs 43% of weekly salary.
Also, stop being weird and antagonistic - they weren't "fake", it's called a "mistake" you brick.