The Kitchenaid mixer is practically a trope in the "buy it for life" subreddit - how the old ones were built to last and the new ones are pieces of shit because they have plastic gears that'll break if you even look at it wrong. Well,
1) those plastic gears are sacrificial gears that will break if you drive it too hard but they cost nothing and are easy to replace; the "properly built one" may have a burnt out motor at this point and may be too costly or impractical to repair - and
2) you don't see the lot of them that haven't survived to this day and whose owners have thrown them out and forgotten about them already. And
3) people keep comparing the lowest end appliance from the 50s with the lowest end appliance today, and obviously the modern one is going to be a piece of disposable garbage. The disposable garbage tier didn't exist back then so compare the quality tier then with the quality tier now, and you'll find that modern quality stuff stands up just fine, if not better because of material advances and minor innovations. Yes, sadly, there are probably categories where the quality tier has gone away and there's only garbage left, that is unfortunate.
1) those plastic gears are sacrificial gears that will break if you drive it too hard but they cost nothing and are easy to replace; the "properly built one" may have a burnt out motor at this point and may be too costly or impractical to repair - and
2) you don't see the lot of them that haven't survived to this day and whose owners have thrown them out and forgotten about them already. And
3) people keep comparing the lowest end appliance from the 50s with the lowest end appliance today, and obviously the modern one is going to be a piece of disposable garbage. The disposable garbage tier didn't exist back then so compare the quality tier then with the quality tier now, and you'll find that modern quality stuff stands up just fine, if not better because of material advances and minor innovations. Yes, sadly, there are probably categories where the quality tier has gone away and there's only garbage left, that is unfortunate.