Sure the increase isn't as massive as it was but it is definetly a very noticeable increase in performance if you come fro m a 6700k but if you are running an Amd 5800 or an intel 12700, the performance increase is not worth the money.
Sure you can run a perfectly useable machine from 10 years ago but there is a massive difference in performance between an ryzen 9600 based system and an ryzen 1600 system.
I do agree with you that performance increase are nowhere as fast as it used to be. But we were also stuck with 4 core intel cpu's for a decade before that.
The fact is though the average person is starting to replace their search engine with chatgpt, gemini, grok or whatever other llm and I have seen more and more small association using generative ai to make their posters instead of working with artist or doing it themselves.
I might be wrong but I think this might be more of a failing of the US education system than an across the board decline world wide. Although I do think millenials but much more so Gen Z and Alpha are adversly affected by social media than the generations before by tv.
I actually do conversions on the regular but than again I live in Europe so I use the metric system and all conversions are base 10 so it is super easy.
Take distance for example:
As funny as it is to joke about that, I imagine that could collapse the entire Spanish government if they have no backup solution.