I don't fully disagree with you. The subscription business practice has become incredibly predatory and that's why it has a foul taste in everyone's mouth.
However, something to understand, most professional graphic design does not happen in Photoshop. It happens more in InDesign and Illustrator. Once you go design firm, print house or corporate, like PS is... there... but not like... "gee I need this every single day". One of the key features to InDesign is the fact that printing to literally any commercial or industrial printer works perfectly. I used to work in a medium sized print shop (digital and offset presses). You used InDesign to send to the RIPs (software that converts the color data properly) and get your intended result the first time about 95% of the time (ICC color management is a whole different topic). If you try Photoshop, ha ha. No. Most normies need to stop subscribing to CC and just get the PS sub. Seriously, you're wasting your money.
That's what I pay for in InDesign. Pure fucking consistency and less me screaming with difficulties. Quark and MS Publisher are great example competitors that thought it's all about design and not about output. Pure fucking trash because nothing ever printed or exported to PDF consistently. You know how MS Word formatting is a nightmare? Yeah, you don't get that in InDesign, ever. InDesign does nearly pure raw output to a rip with lots of controls. Now, if you have zero idea what you're doing, it's a nightmare. Kind of like the Manual setting to a pro-consumer DSLR camera. Once you learn how to use F-stop, shutter, ISO, etc, you refuse to use a camera without manual control. If you don't understand, you think it's stupid to not have the camera (or in this case software) think for you.
Plus, InDesign has variable data and other features that make booklet layouts a breeze. Hard to wrap your head around at first, but once you understand how the tools work, making print and digital PDFs, and then maintaining those files, reusing those layouts effectively and a whole mess of other timing saving features, you'll very, very, very quickly understand why someone would be okay with paying 60 or 100 bucks a month for it... as long as there are regular improvements. Blender has more regular, substantial improvements and it's free. Part of me thinks if they did a $600 one time buy license, then like a $10 a month "update subscription" that might be a better compromise. Not sure on the exact figures, but you get the point.
Also, from a pro graphic designer/print designer's perspective that's been doing this since 2006: Adobe is a fuckton more than Photoshop and these anti-Adobe conversations treat it as if it's important. PS is more like the jingling keys for the normie/public to be distracted by. Like PS is important... like how backseats are important to a car (unless you're more a photographer... and you don't like Lightroom...). If I lost access to PS, I'd shrug and be slightly bummed out. But not by much. Illustrator and InDesign? Might as well change careers at that point. Effectively nerfed and nuked as a designer.