Definitely don't think about how much "nice" equipment is bought, used once or twice and then sits in a cupboard forever until disposed of in a skip when someone dies or a company goes under and the building is cleared.

My last place had a whole box full of FPGA dev boards that I would have killed to play with as an undergrad.

The real pities are in machining where what looks like a junk heap to the family may actually be a priceless trove of rare tools and irreplaceable machine parts. Not to mention lovingly-made tools and jigs. A physical cousin to unpublished software sitting on a thrown-away hard drive.

Think of it like a delicious meal or a grenade. You pay for it to be consumed once, then it's gone.