"The ole days" meaning 1963 to 1976. Anywhere after that, if you had a monitor and a modem, you might as well buy a microcomputer. Uncontested access, total control, boots into an environment to write your own programs. Only the French made a networked alternative worthwhile - and frankly even Minitel machines should've had homebrew for poker or whatever.

Trends over the last decade are general inflation not being matched by any serious growth in wages. Trends over the last year are just grifters with an infinite money glitch buying literally all hardware so the robot can stare at pirated movies. I'm not the sort of person to insist capitalism never works, but this is definitely capitalism not working.