Of course, the practice of repair was different when the appliance costed relatively a lot more. E.g. a TV was more likely to be repaired, but also costed about 10x as much relatively speaking. So if it would have cost you 25% of the price of a TV to get it repaired, you would have got it repaired. If it's just as easy to repair now, then the repair would still be over twice the price of just buying new.