The beatings have been normalized. The 1060 6GB (essentially 1060 Ti) started at $250 for non-crap AIB models... Even the prices for the x50 tier have been steadily climbing from 750 to 950 to 1050 to 1650.
With this most recent generation Nvidia has shifted the models around slightly so they're no longer positioned as they have been in the most recent generation with respect the different tiers of dies that Nvidia creates. Basing the expectation of pricing around a name like that is silly because it's merely an arbitrary designation that all companies get to choose and that is subject to changes over times as well as marketing shenanigans.
Take the Ti branding that Nvidia uses for it's cards. Most recently it's associated with their high-end cards, most typically the xx80 Ti cards. However, before that it was used for midrange cards (x50 and x60) only during the Fermi and Kepler generations. Prior to that it dates back to the GeForce 2, 3, and 4 series cards where it started off as a bit of a confusing mess launching as part of the GeForce 2 Ti, GeForce 3 200Ti and GeForce 3 500Ti which all came out on the same day and had some bizarre product stack placement.
AnandTech actually has a really good roundup of a lot of different cards and some
benchmarks of the performance that you can go back and read if you want a trip down nostalgia lane. The GeForce 2 Ti was essentially a die shrink of the GeForce 2 GTS with better clock speeds. The GeForce 2 Ti wasn't quite the top card of its generation as it didn't quite match the GeForce 2 Ultra. The other two cards were even more confusing landing on either side of the original GeForce3 in terms of performance. During the GeForce 4 series Ti was the premium brand designation as opposed to the MX cards which were the low/mid-range cards. Then it vanished for almost a decade.
The point is that if something like the Ti designation can change so much and move around the product stack, why should any other designation be expected to remain static? If you go back to the 200 series the x60 card used the same die as the x80 card. This was also true for Fermi and Kepler where x60 cards used the same die as the x80 card. By the time we get to Pascal, the x60 has been relegated to the third tier of dies with the exception of a few refresh models released later on in the generation using heavily cut down second tier dies.
The x50 card has also moved positions on the stack. It went from having upwards of 6-8 other cards below it during the 200 - 700 series generations when it was the top card in Nvidia's wide selection of low-end GPUs only to have its position dwindle towards the bottom of the entire stack where it now resides as the lowest Turing card. The x50 card cost the same $150 when it launched over a decade ago as the 250 as the 1650 did when it launched last year, and the price of the x50 card has bobbed up and down in between then costing as much as $160 with the 960 and as low as $110 with the 650 and 1050. Look at the die sizes and you'll likely see a correlation with the price charged.
All of these comparisons are ultimately meaningless since the model numbers and other designations are completely arbitrary. In another decade the xx80 cards might be the designation for low-end cards if it exists at all. The only thing to look at is inflation adjusted prices and what kind of features or performance you can get for a specific amount when compared to other points in history. Further adjust for the increase in die sizes and need for better build quality due to increased thermals and you're getting a lot more for your money during the more recent generations.
A good analogy is the automobile. A car today costs around $20,000 new for an entry level vehicle. At a glance it might seem as though they were far cheaper when you could get a car for $2,000 in 1960 or even less at $800 in 1909 when the Model T was introduced, but adjust for inflation and those earlier examples are right back around $20,000. You get a considerably better car today with greater performance, more features, and far better safety standards. Increases in real median income also mean that a $20,000 car has become a smaller part of the average individual's pay check. Previously it would take more than a year's salary for most individuals to buy that car. Now more than half of the working population would not only be able to purchase one, but have money left over afterwards.
TLDR: It's actually not only not as bad as it may appear to be in reality, but typically better than at earlier points in history. Whining is generally misdirected.