A little scared of the future

[Lumadurin]

There's no reason a dungeon should give useless gear that's 40 points BELOW what we are currently wearing if you even casually play this game.

I'm just gonna chime in and say this is usually done in consideration for new players who are currently leveling so that they can progress in ilvl slightly. Or people who have been unsubbed for extended periods of time.
At 50/60, and eventually 70 in 5.0, players will likely be equiping some of this gear as they go along unless they have a friend who can sugar-daddy them with HQ crafted equipment. Because it's unlikely they'll have a backlog of 2k+ Poetics to get a full set of enhanced Ironworks/Shire/soon-to-be-Rakshasa gear. They also won't have access to anything better (short of buying HQ [X]4 or higher off the marketboard) until they reach the next expansion pack and start getting gear from vendors/the MSQ.
Dungeon gear has never been for people who were BiS/tome-geared in the recent raid tier if I recall correctly.

That aside, itemization and power progression in XIV is objectively bad, yes.