All things equal (features that I need from the product) I like to buy high quality things because they make me feel good (they look well built, they give me this warm feeling inside that I got my money's worth). But I realize this is all emotional and rationally I shouldn't, in most cases.
I don't think they pay off long term, at least it seems heavily dependent on the product type. That's because we are playing a lottery game, even if this product breaks in 0.1% cases vs 5% cases for a much cheaper product, we're not buying large numbers of them, we're buying just one and while the probability to break on me is smaller it can still happen and the monetary loss would be much larger than if I were to buy the cheaper product. That is, the warranty doesn't scale with the price (the expensive top quality TV is $2000 and the cheaper one is $500 and both have 1 year of warranty), for the same money I can buy 4 of those $500 TVs and would last at least 4 years (but very likely to find at least one that will work much longer, since I'm buying up to 4 of them).
I don't think they pay off long term, at least it seems heavily dependent on the product type. That's because we are playing a lottery game, even if this product breaks in 0.1% cases vs 5% cases for a much cheaper product, we're not buying large numbers of them, we're buying just one and while the probability to break on me is smaller it can still happen and the monetary loss would be much larger than if I were to buy the cheaper product. That is, the warranty doesn't scale with the price (the expensive top quality TV is $2000 and the cheaper one is $500 and both have 1 year of warranty), for the same money I can buy 4 of those $500 TVs and would last at least 4 years (but very likely to find at least one that will work much longer, since I'm buying up to 4 of them).