I am under the impression that all transactions less than 0.01 require the fee.

And to your point, the smaller transaction amounts are the very essence of the problem. Even though I want to continue to sell things for a dollar, that fee is only going to go up. Right now it's seven cents. by year's end it will probably be more like 10 or 15 cents. On a decent sized transaction it is negligible. but at $150/BTC and rising, it's real money down in the dollar store section.