I would think so. A few years ago, there were many PR5 and PR6 sites available for sale but nowadays, they are rarely available.
The big thing that sucks now is no one does link sharing. This is one of the reasons people became so obsessed with Twitter and Facebook followers, because it has become about the only way to get backlinks and a little link juice anymore without owning a network of websites.
I always link to other websites. And google seems to like it. It is first of all natural, and also usefull to the visitors.
PR is not much harder to achieve but google has given more priority to authority links and .edu and .gov links... And it gives much priority to social bookmarking sites and articles directories... And getting edu links has become tuff nowdays..