Your right, it never really goes in the direction of higher qaulity.

I also agree that features have gotten better and yes, there is a
huge capability to build far superior amps, but again, this is prob.
only being done in the high end amplifiers, to which I have little
expirience with because of costs.

I don't think there's been a shift to higher prices, really. I think
yesterday's high end amps have now become today's high end amps with a few
bonuses. But, in addition to today's high end amps, you've also got even
higher end amps (two of which I listed really to exaggerate) and you've got
lower end amps. There's a market for all of these genres. Some people want
100 watts for under 200 bucks. You couldn't really buy that back in the day
(when you take inflation into account). But if you still want a great amp,
you can spend, say, 300 or 400 for one and it will easily beat yesterday's
300 or 400 dollar amp. The quality will be about the same, but today you'll
get more power because the watts per dollar have increased for the most
part.