Yeah the MLS is absolutely dire, its proper non league stuff most of the time. Bradley Wright-Philips won the golden boot last season ffs.
It's hardly that bad anymore. The standard is rising, but it will be held back by the restrictive rules it abides by. Can you imagine any other league in the world in a 'big' country where there are 5-10 players in each senior squad that make $50,000 a
year? It's asinine. That said, it's also a completely different league than it was even 5 years ago. If your only exposure was watching a few games when Beckham arrived, then yea, you're not going to have a great opinion of the league, but it's a different level than it was then and light years ahead of 10 years ago.
On Wright-Phillips, he benefited massively from playing with Thierry Henry, who set him up about 8 or 9 times last year in addition to scoring 8 penalties (somewhere near there, heard it on the radio last week). Henry's gone now and he's back to average even by MLS standard.