Stuff just does not last as long. I just changed a hot water heater last year. I was told that they last about 7-9 years in my area. The one I changed out was over 20 years old.
The plumber also told me that the copper pipe they sell now is not as good. It has more junk in the metal according to him.
In my former life doing maintenance on houses I remember pulling out hot water tanks that had been in for 3-5 years and they would weigh 500 pounds completely full of material and sediment caused by the breaking down of the inside of the tank.
In the UK, the house I bought was built in the 60s and had gas heating. I sold it in 2002. It still had the original gas heating system and it was still serviced each year and well within the legal tolerances. The engineer told me in the early 90s that they couldn’t get spare parts any more and if anything went wrong, it would be a mean a new system. In 1996, the burner needed replacing. I managed to find somewhere that refurbished the original burners and that was put it and worked a treat, until I sold the house.
Our house in Germany, the old heating system was from the early 90s and we had to replace it in 2015. The new one should last 10 years… I expect its replacement will only last 5 years. 
They couldn’t even drain the one that was 25 years old. He had to take it out, full of water, and throw it down sideways, outside, He finally damaged it a bit and it drained out.
But, the news ones suck compared to old…
Completely agree. I expect something that is 20-25 years old to have rust and other issues but something that is 3-5 years old today is in worse condition than the 20-25 year old stuff. Again completely sad…
Although I agree with your post fixing prices is probably not the solution.
Absolute values in prices create distortions in the economy and become out of date really quickly.
Now if they defined a formula that would allow them to calculate a minimum price based on certain criteria of production cost and factor in variables such as population density, and have that price updated in regular intervals, that would probably achieve better results.
There’s a cheap Walmart brand (Sceptre / Komodo) that has 4 HDMI inputs and no smarts. I have two of them, and the only complaints I have are with the native sound on the 40" 1080p model and the source selection (on both models I own) not being compatible with many remotes. That said, they’ve held up well in my house and there are no apps to go out of date. Win-win!