Your parents, lower middle class in the 80s, could afford a washing machine that lasts 40 years.

You, lower middle class in the 2020s, can afford with the same resources a washing machine that lasts 5 years and is no more effective than your parents' (but has an app).

In the sense of the parent comment, you are fortunate that the magic of capitalism currently produces such cheap washing machines that even people as poor as you can afford them. But from another angle, the purchasing power of the lower middle class has sunk over time, and quality has degraded to match because durable products have now become "outside the grasp of most Americans".