Has the cost of HiFi gotten a bit too much?

I haven't but maybe it's something I need to look into once my car lease has expired.

Looked at buying my soon to be retired company car, 2018 Dodge Charger SXT Plus for one of my kids, 60K miles and they want $25K for it. That is what my company paid for it in 2018.

Top end gear is expensive but there is plenty of good budget gear out there. Maybe more choices than ever.

while the highest end can be called astronomical, the quality of modest cost systems has become quite impressive...

I think the root cause is the FED has been printing money.  I mean look at their balance sheet.  They got 8 trillion dollars.  All that was just trying to artificially inflate the stock market and the housing market but at the expense of inflating the cost of everything else.

Are manufecturers , rich  peoples ?
Is it a rewarding business ?

I don’t know .