Why subscription and not one time payment?

Before: Photoshop single license $700.  Upgrades maybe $300 every couple of years. 

After: $10 per month including upgrades. 

Looks cheaper to me unless you don’t upgrade even after 6 years. 

All apps license used to be thousands of dollars. 

Consider AutoCAD, which is comparable to Photoshop as high-end software used by professionals around the world. Here in Norway it costs the equivalent of $2400 a year, or $200 a month. That's for a single application.

What I don't understand is why people with low income hate subscription so much. They should love it. They can afford to cough up $1000 or more, just like that, but not $10 a month? I've had periods in my life when I didn't have any money, and I still remember the sacrifice it took to get a Design Standard license. I ate noodles and rice for a month, couldn't go anywhere, couldn't do anything for a long time. It was a serious blow to my economy that took a long time to recover from. How I would have embraced a $10 a month subscription.

I think the answer is that Adobe intends the Creative Cloud software to be for professionals who use them as business tools, to make a living. Because they are often used to generate income on projects worth thousands of dollars (for career designers/artists), the subscription fee ends up being a small part of overall business expenses that also include hardware, office space rent, salaries, business insurance, etc; and the cost can be applied toward a business tax deduction in some regions. If you buy a camera to run a photo business or a car mechanic’s toolset to run a car repair business, you would spend more for a professional-quality tool than you would if it was only for personal use at home.

Now, where does that leave the hobbyists and people who are broke? Like you asked: “Can't they have us pay about... $100 and that IT!” Yes, there is a way. Photoshop Elements 2020 is available for under $100 — that’s it, no subscription. It may not have as many features as the professional version of Photoshop, but it is up-to-date and powerful enough for many of the things people need to do with Photoshop.

This is a user Forum, so you are not really addressing Adobe here, even though some Adobe employees thankfully have been dropping by.

One does not need to subscribe to the whole range of products, the Photography plan for example (Photohsop, Lightroom) is about 10,– $ a month. 

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography.html

And I think the perpetual license for Photoshop CS6 cost way more than 100,– $ anyway.