I haven't sent btc in a while. Back when i sent btc, fees were less than 50 cents. Maybe 3 dollars? I went and tried to send less than 30 dollars of btc... fees show up as 12 dollars on electrum and thats with the lowest possible fee where i make it send within 25 blocks. Now if you want to send under 1 dollar, it cost 12 dollars. When is this issue getting fixed? Who in their right mind would send btc for small amounts when even the fee is that much? Its like paying 12 dollars for something you want to buy that is 1 dollar?
When was that time that you sent a transaction with a 50 cents tx's fee? because I am curious also to how many transaction numbers are involved in the Bitcoin network that time. The number of Bitcoin transaction per day now is averaging 330k+ for more than 1 month now and that's a good sign though as the price of Bitcoin is also increasing but the downside is the tx's fee are riding also.
Sending a micro transaction nowadays using Bitcoin is very frustrating so the best way for you to send a small amount of payment is to convert it to some other Altcoins that offers a very small amount of tx's fee.