The secret to knockoff brands is to add more cheese. So long as that cheese is not velveeta. Some bloody how velveeta cheese is straight up the worst cheese I've found for adding to other foods. I've had stuff that
claimed to be imitation cheese (I still don't know how that worked) that did better than velveeta cheese. Your standard american "looks like orange plastic, tastes like something trying to be cheese" cheese improves flavor and texture more. So on and so forth.
Actual kraft brand M&C's mostly meh to me, these days. Would rather get offbrand and go from there. Tastes better, probably still costs less with the additives >_>
It's an interesting thought though because I wonder how productive people were back then compared to now?
We have people working in similar conditions today. They produce cheap goods, usually, and sometimes turn a better profit for the company, but their productivity is usually pretty shit per worker and you might not be able to get even half the working lifetime out of 'em. We've seen a fair few number of studies and whatnot showing that by and large better treatment and conditions means a worker that is going to work harder for you, do better, stick around longer, and be less likely to do something that screws you over (sell corp secrets, whatev'). They cost more, but it's pretty common the better output outweighs said cost.
If you're not caring about variables or technology advances or whatev', the answer is we curbstomp them into the ground then run their businesses out of town and dance on the corpses of their CEOs, though. Productivity (particularly efficiency, often enough in straight up raw units) has not stopped growing pretty much anywhere, in almost every industry. We're really damn good at making shit these days, been getting better for a long time, and show plenty of signs we're still not going to stop any time soon.
Though yeah, close to nothing has been pure capitalist, full on free market damn the guns, for a long time. Mostly because systems that try tend to collapse like a wozzname in short order, either into another system or just outright. Unfettered capitalism in the vast majority of markets is a riotous and thoroughly unpleasant orgy of incredibly unbalanced market forces followed by no hangover because everyone involve died. Is bad juju as a rule.