Wildcard certificates have come down as low as $200 a year, very recently.
The price issue is mostly perception at this point, but like they say, perception is reality. I would gamble that most people don't realize how much cheaper SSL certification has become.
What scares me are companies that allow a front 'login' page on a non-SSL domain, and have everything else on their domain name via https, allowing for easy man-in-the-middle attacks.
I suppose that depends on the data. $500 keeps one of my servers running for 6 months. For a bank the security is very useful. For a site like HN where the only sensitive data is the password, it isn't so much.
As a business owner, I feel a bit like it's a big con game, as I have trouble understanding what it is that EV SSL certs solve that wasn't supposed to be solved with the original SSL certs. It could just be my ignorance, but I still find $400/yr to file some papers and then do some math a bit absurd.