Yes this is a major problem on BTC
No, it's not. It's a designed feature.
the cost can be over $20 per transaction and at the start of the year the cost was something like $0.00001
Yes. Bitcoin has gained popularity in the past year. Higher demand for a limited resource results in higher costs. This is the way the world works with ALL resources.
and the miners should take profit by mining new coins and competing to add new blocks the the block-chain.
They do.
However, the miners receive the transaction fees of the transactions that they include in their blocks. If someone is willing to voluntarily pay a higher fee, then why should their high-fee transaction be ignored to include a cheaper transaction instead? That wouldn't be fair and wouldn't make sense. You are suggesting that low fee transactions should confirm quickly and that high fee transactions should wait longer?
Unlike 99% of people I am not a big fan of the block chain because it's too slow and complicated to stop double spending when you have to process and check history on all the inputs to a transaction in a database that is already 200gb in size and have all the energy and GPU power being wasted as machine compete with each other to find out who is fastest at counting grains of sand to win a prize for the miners.
It is clear that you do not understand how the system works.
Cost something like 120KWH of electric just to confirm a single transaction
Check your math. You seem to have made an error in that calculation.
That electricity is being used for much more than just "confirming a single transaction".