Why is most everything remastered?

Let’s not forget that for vinyl anyway, the tapes used for the cutting were very often a copy with bass rolled of so the phono carts of the time could track it. New vinyl masters don’t require that since cartridges are better today and it’s a seen as luxury item with more spent on gear.
A to D converters back in the early days of digital were not nearly as good as now, and of course there’s higher transfers than 44.1/16.

I’m not saying some remasters don’t take a step backwards sonically, but there’s often no reason why it has to be that way.
A while back I heard the new Peter Gabriel remasters.
I would have bet that they were remixed from multi-track, since it was such a huge sonic upgrade from the first digital masterings. I posted on the Steve Hoffman forum about it and was told there was no remix, just a remaster.

Plus today we have better cables and power conditioning available, so if a remastering studio uses these, it should be beneficial. 

@elliottbnewcombjr RIAA is not part of the discussion. It’s been a standard for a long time and not a variable regarding the remastered vs. original. What I referred to was the the actual production process for making LP’s and the practice of making an eq’d Dub that LP’s in the past were often made from. I have no idea of the percentage of releases used these dubs, or if it was mostly on rock/pop recordings. Also for popular albums that sold well, multiple pressing plants were used in different regions of the country and world. Each of these plant’s received a dub to master from, which would be second or third generation or worse.

A new mastering today could more likely come from the master itself. In any instance it’s highly unlikely a new mastering would use the old technique of a specially eq’d vinyl dub that was meant to keep LP’s from skipping, etc. on mass market turntables/carts of the past.