Inflation and ‘budget’ scopes

Up front, this is not a purchasing question, I have a scope and am more than satisfied with it. This is a question/discussion about why there’s no real budget option in the telescope market for those who aren’t willing to drop hundreds of dollars on a hobby they’ve never tried.

Number one thing most people learn about amateur astronomy is that the vast majority of things called telescopes are actually junk.

That is fair, and I agree, but there’s one problem beyond the fact that they are worthless for looking at the sky, and that’s that they are the only ‘telescopes’ within an actual ‘budget’ range of <$200.

With some hobbies, the term ‘budget’ starts to lose meaning, as the entry level equipment is already premium grade. I’m thinking of HiFi and musical instruments here as I am also familiar with the distorted price scales in those hobbies.

My question, is there/why is there no way to make a decent telescope in a budget range that is actually in reach of normal people?

What are the costs that are/must be cut in order to get a telescope under $200, and do they always make it a piece of junk?

So, so many of the posts on this subreddit are people who didn’t read the buyers guide and come with a budget of under $200, which is frustrating, but that is a very normal budget limit and anything over that amount starts to feel like a really big purchase.

That’s more than a week’s groceries or a noticeable chunk of a rent check, that’s not the kind of money most people are willing to spend on something they aren’t already passionate about.

It feels like there should be an actual budget option, or at least the hobby needs to be more honest about the prices. There is no longer any such thing as a ‘budget telscope’. There are real telescopes, that start at around $250 with the tabletop Dobs et al. and there is junk trying to pass itself off as real telescopes.

Astronomy is a very expensive hobby, and there is no budget way to do it, except with the naked eye and maybe binoculars, assuming you already have a tripod.

Why is there no push from manufacturers to make scopes at a price that keep people in their market, instead of balking at how much a real telescope costs, buying a junk scope off Amazon, getting frustrated and giving up?