I don't blink too much at the price of bikes. I don't ride as much as I used to, but when I was dirt riding a few times a week and racing, a new bike every other year was a good investment towards my sanity.
The bikes are so good nowadays too, even a "bad" bike is still pretty good. Suspension, brakes, chassis, motors, it's all pretty good. The closed cartridge forks in my modern dirtbikes were a decent improvement over the open cartridge forks of the bikes I rode 15-20 years ago...which were a massive improvement over the damping rod forks of the olden days. The motors are great, my main ride is an e-start, counter-balanced 2 stroke with a 6 speed gearbox...those are tangible benefits over my yz250 that I used to ride.
In the case of my 350, it doesn't have the poor low-speed manners that the water-cooled 4 strokes did in the early 2000's...and it's not a slow, fluffy bike either...I was hitting 90 in a speed trap at the last race I did with it. Get to a technical spot, it's perfectly happy going up a rocky waterfall in 1st gear at a walking pace. It does all this and somehow it comes from the factory with a license plate.
As far as the streetbikes, I really don't know enough about them to have a strong opinion. I have my mt09, which I like after I did a few mods. It's not a dedicated sports bike, yet it's still boring to ride at legal speeds. I look at some of the modern liter bikes and you can't legally use even a fraction of their potential on public roads...that fact would make it hard for me to spend money on one.
