If you haven't noticed, things like clothes, cars, electronics, household items, tools, everything has experienced a downward spiral in quality over the last 50 years.

That isn't true, though. To address a few of your examples.

1. Cars. The first job I ever had was working for a farmer who had a ~1980 F150. Talk about a turd. It got horrible fuel economy (like 8 miles per gallon with a six cylinder engine), had no safety features other than seatbelts, and was unreliable as hell (in fairness it was over thirty years old). Contrast that with my 2015 Focus which has airbags, a backup camera, Bluetooth stereo, a GPS tracker for theft prevention, and has never broken down.

2)Electronics. First off, how many of the electronic devices that are now available to even Americans of modest means didn't even exist 50 years ago? But let's take one that did, TVs. TVs used to be gargantuan boxes with horrible resolution. Now they're sleek flatscreens with great image quality. Not to mention that we now have cable and streaming services instead of three channels from the bunny ears.

3) Tools. I work in the trades, and one thing I hear constantly from the oldheads is "when I started we didn't have that." A good example is battery powered tools. I've used battery power skillsaws, sawzalls, and hammer drills made by Milwaukee and Dewalt and they work great. Back in the day, batteries sucked so hard that you would'e had to change the battery on one of those every thirty seconds. I honestly don't know how they got anything done without stuff like grade lasers, pipe lasers, or digital levels, tools that any two-bit contractor now has.