Yes, and?
> Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions.
No. I have gone through 7 personal printers and used countless business printers. Total number of jams I've cleared from my personal printers are probably less than 10 in 20+ years.
I've cleared much more paper jams from top of the line printers regardless of their build year. Reliability of a business printer is a function of its maintenance quality it seems.
My most stubborn printer wouldn't feed some papers since they're too smooth but, it started to happen after 7 years and its feed rollers were dry and worn down at that time.
One of my HP printers started to lose cartridge calibration, made funny noises and gave strange error messages after 6 years. Looks like I've worn down its internals. It was a "disposable" model it seems. I've probably used it three times its expected lifetime.
> The only thing that was better about printing in 2000 is that back then printing was more useful
It's still very useful at a personal scale. I've also cut back my printing to save the trees but, reading articles, academic stuff and a good old technical documentation is vastly better on paper, hands down.