By the tone of your post I assume that you have not experienced a night of strong wind or heavy rain inside a cheap tent compared with a Hubba or a Rainbow.
I also have to assume that you are referring to the Wenzel Starlite as your "comparable" product.

First I can tell you for a fact that if one of the various Chinese manufacturers could make a similar tent to the Hubba using similar materials for a fraction of the cost of the MSR they would. There is at least one Hubba Hubba type tent sold by a Chinese company that is almost half of the cost of the MSR, but is heavier (cheaper fly material) and uses cheaper but still aluminum poles.
As far as weight is concerned, the Rainbow is almost twice as light and still offers more space inside (steep walls on the Star Light)
The real weight of the Wenzel is over 4 lbs, BTW...
There is a very big difference in cost and performance between taffeta nylon and fiberglass poles compared with silnylon and Easton tubes.
Take the Rainbow as a comparison. At $225 it is 7.5x the cost of the Wenzel. But that is not a way to judge a product. There are many that have used the Rainbow for more than 50 nights, some well over that. If you work on 50 nights, that is 4.50 per night.
Do some research and you will find that tents like the Starlite are used once or twice ( I have just noticed Ben's comment) and then the owner upgrades or gives camping a miss. That is 10,20 or $30 per night. Makes the Rainbow sound cheap, doesn't it ?


Here is the start of a user review for the Star Light :
The only positives of this tent are that it was really really cheap, and light. That being said, I don't really think it was worth the 30 bucks. I'd rather have put that money toward a real tent. I think it fails in all of the respects that a tent should not: size/comfort, ease of use, weather protection, durability

http://www.trailspace.com/gear/wenzel/starlite/review/6833/

Franco