Yes, they are being unethical. The buyer doesn't know the difference.
If they produce a fine quality, highly durable toaster that sells for $100+, are they being ethical or foolish?
We won't know, because a fine quality toaster no longer exists.
If people don’t buy their toaster, they won’t be in business long. Is that ethically meeting their responsibilities towards their investors and employees?
Their responsibility is not to their investors, nor to their employees. Their responsibility is to their work. To their craft. Worry about the work and the money will come.
Then you go out, invest the capital necessary and produce toasters that cost $75 each. We'll see how many people share your views versus those that want low cost.
But you won't do that. Instead you'll sit around here and complain about corporations like a liberal.
For someone posting on a conservative forum, you seem to have a remarkable ignorance of how the free market works.
You claim that you would be happy to buy a toaster of the quality made in the 50s, despite it costing a proportionate $150 to $200 or more. Good for you! You are obviously a person of rare discernment, for whom quality is far more important than price.
Unfortunately for you, most people don’t feel this way. Therefore, those who produced lower quality but much lower price appliances took market share away from those producing the higher quality but more expensive units. The high quality producers had in the long run no choice but to compete on price by lowering their quality, or to go out of business, which would equally well result in no quality toasters being on the market.
There are quite a few things where people are willing to pay a much higher price for higher perceived quality: clothes, hotels, restaurant meals, wine and liquor, autos, ladies of the night.
There are a great many other things for which most people will pay little if any more for supposed quality, buying strictly on price: gasoline, airline travel, most groceries, etc. Among these are small household appliances. There just is little market for high quality and price. Therefore none (or very few) are produced. Since the market is small, there are few economies of scale for the producers, which drives the price per unit even higher.
The free market does not always provide the best product. It just provides the product that most people perceive as the best value for their money. Those who disagree on priorities are just out of luck.
IMHO, businessmen who produce a product for which there is no market are not ethical. They are stupid. And they aren’t in business for long.
Good news! I found a $350+ toaster for you at Neiman-Marcus. Hand-assembled in England. I have no idea whether the quality is as good as those made here in the 30s and 40s. But at least you can spend about as much.
.com/store/catalog/prod.jhtml?itemId=prod49270072&ecid=NMCIGoogleBaseFeed&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=H2MM5
If you like, you can also spend upwards of $1000 on a commercial toaster, which will presumably last for decades in home use, as you prefer.
Not true! I bought a Sanyo from Japan several years ago. Heavy enameled metal casing, a nice thick glass door (a bit hard to explain, but it's a toaster/toaster oven combo), stainless steel trays & racks, etc. It makes perfect toast, perfect bagels, and it is very easy to clean. It has seen heavy use and is still in perfect shape. It was not cheap, but I cook a lot, and that made it worthwhile. It is modeled on ones used in Japan.
My neighbor has a KitchenAid Pro, which is excellent, too(also expensive - around $225 dollars).
Very high quality small appliances do exist, but they can be quite expensive and may not be worth it if you don't subject them to heavy use.
Still, they are not as much as a toaster was in the 1940s/50's in today's dollars and you get so many cool new features.
The US system of innovation coupled with ever-lowering costs for better products and more product choices is second to none.