In personal experience things were more crappy then than now. The explaining factor could be that production techniques have evolved as a whole, and less manual steps harmonizes the quality of cheap goods.
To take IKEA as an example, their table were really bad 20 years ago, and the only option was to either buy from another flatpack company, that was often worse (assembly would need like 50 screws for a single table...wtf), or a hand made "old fashion" table that would last a lifetime but cost 10 times more. Current IKEA tables will last a lifetime for the same price as the crap from 20 years ago.
Another example is French and Italian cars. They were really bad decades ago, reliability issues were only compensated by the ease to repair and cheap local maintenance. But industrial process are so much better now that production quality and reliability is at a level way above what would be expected for cars of roughly the same production cost.
IKEA at least was, the last time I shopped there, willing to sell at different levels of build quality. Some products cut every corner possible in the name of cost, but also passed a noticeable portion of that savings to the consumer. Others used some slightly better materials in places where the results mattered with predictably good results. As long as the consumer made an informed choice the result was as desired.
IKEA always have had a range of different quality products. You could buy cheap stuff that didn't last or you could more expensive stuff that last 20 or 30 years ago as well as today.
Ikea is a bad example in IMO. I moved countries 3 times in the last 10 years and bought many of the same exact Ikea items all 3 times. The quality went down each time. Things that were previously metal became plastic. Things that were previously reenforced in 4 positions were now only 3. etc....
Also, several of the more sturdy things they had they no longer sell and what they have now in the same category are vastly less sturdy.
I agree though, they do still have some good, quality, sturdy kitchen tables and a few pretty good sturdy sofas.
To take IKEA as an example, their table were really bad 20 years ago, and the only option was to either buy from another flatpack company, that was often worse (assembly would need like 50 screws for a single table...wtf), or a hand made "old fashion" table that would last a lifetime but cost 10 times more. Current IKEA tables will last a lifetime for the same price as the crap from 20 years ago.
Another example is French and Italian cars. They were really bad decades ago, reliability issues were only compensated by the ease to repair and cheap local maintenance. But industrial process are so much better now that production quality and reliability is at a level way above what would be expected for cars of roughly the same production cost.