The days of affordable trucks have come and gone long ago
Have new vehicles ever been "affordable"?
Anyway, for comparison. A DLX (base) 4x4 22R-E, automatic, 4WD XtraCab was $13,700 in 1991. Adjusted for inflation that's $25,500. My '91 had power steering which was still optional on 2WD. It had an AM/FM radio and a bench seat.
A base SR 4wd 4 cylinder Tacoma in 2018 is $28,600. It's not 100% equal because the SR now gets A/C, cruise control, bucket seats, power windows, CD/MP3. It would be much closer to an SR5 in 1991. So comparing those, a V6, automatic, XtraCab, 4WD SR5 in 1991 was $17,200 and that's $31,900 in 2018 Dollars. An SR5 V6 4WD now is $33,810.
So maybe you're complaining about feature creep and that if they still sold a less optioned truck the real price, even not fully adjusted for inflation, would be cheaper. Like what happened with electronics and computers over the same time period. But you'd have to go back pretty far to find the turning point when automobile manufacturing wasn't relatively efficient and still labor intensive. Not to mention that in 2018 there are many more mandated things like emissions, safety that require complexity so the fluff you get is largely coming along for the cost and purely profit for the car company.