vintage versus modern speakers

Rockanroller- There are plenty of modern "artisanal" U.S. speaker makers. Here is a totally random list off the top of my head (well, not totally random, definitely skewed toward tube-friendly designs). Per Paraneer, if you give us an amp maker or amp type AND importantly a price range, the list can become more focused, but here are just a few:
Tyler
Green Mountain
Audiokinesis
Selah
Fritz
Merlin
Geddes
Beveridge
Audience
Ohm
Daedalus Audio
Devore Fidelity
Classic Audio Loudspeakers
Soundlab
KCS Custom Loudspeakers

if you step across the border to Canada, you can add quite a few more, two of which are Coincident and Ref 3A.

My apologies to all speaker builders I've left out. Others will fill in the blanks.

Raymonda nailed it when he said

generally one can spend less today and get much better sound per dollar than yesterday.

IMO, partly as a result of what Timlub said:

Material technology... we now have Kevlar, carbon fiber, magnesium, aluminum, ceramic, pulp wood fiber cones & yada yada yada... This has changed along with a much improved manufacturing process. We used to have measure 50 drivers to match up a half dozen to tight tolerances. Today, they come off the line within 5% or better tolerances... Combine that with better caps & resisters along with compensation circuitry not typically used back then

to which I would also add:
computer modeling which cuts R&D costs substantially, and
lower cost manufacturing sourced from third world countries.

At the other end of the cost spectrum are the high 5 to mid 6 figure speaker systems which would have been beyond anyone's wildest imaginations "back in the day".

The problem is that it is very hard to find somewhere where you can listen to speakers, without a salesman obnoxious presence...

Hence, the growing popularity of the high end shows. Of course there are the problems of bad room acoustics, partnering equipment, yada yada, but those things are also true at a B&M store.