Domestic awards have largely been tied to fare prices for close to a decade at the already noted 1.1 - 1.3 CPM range. The move to international revenue based awards to/from US/Canada began a few years later. But it's not exactly a new thing there either. The inflation in awards is largely driven by inflation in revenue fares at this point. Unless they modify/get rid of Pay with Miles at 1 CPM, I don't see much of a reason to get all hot and bothered.

Bottomline, if you educate yourself on how revenue fare pricing works, in particular, the fact that they tend to discount business class seats around "significant" US holiday periods, you can get significantly better deals than 600K roundtrip for international J. We have one coming up in a couple months -- Easter. President's Day weekend is also one, but we are too close-in for those revenue fares/awards due to 28 day advance purchase requirements in them. See Seasonality section of fares rules below (from delta.com) which are present in both revenue and award fare rules.

While award pricing is certainly a factor in many people's choice of airlines, most people don't obsess over it to the extent of the MS/CC churner crowd who is a realtively minor subset of flyers. Nor are many as hyper-focused on international J awards as that subset.