Yes, some very cheap shoes aren't very resistant, but I seriously doubt that the kind of shoes that minimizes cost divided by durability is in the range people think of when they hear “expensive shoes”.

I've gone in the opposite direction. I have wide feet (8E), and now that I've found cheap but not terribly durable sneakers that fit, I just keep buying more of them.

Is that really true though? I've found with sneakers the sole lasts 250-500 miles, so buying a shoe that costs more than $40 is almost certainly bad value from a durability perspective.

For shoes that can be resoled, this number increases, as you want an upper that will last through a number of resoles, but the shoes with highest durability/cost are still not going to be on the expensive end of the shoe type.