Lower fees might take hours to make a transaction.
This is not a solution though, if we want to say that Bitcoin is electronic cash and a new way of making online payments - if those need hours to happen or they will never happen due to the low fees chosen.
Using segwit, an average transaction takes about $1 to get a confirmation within a very reasonable amount of time. If you're willing to do so, $0.50 could bring it to a few hours only. Like I said, there are improvements and there isn't any silver bullet solution without compromises. If anyone does have one, please bring it to the table instead of creating a thread and whining about it.
The rewards of the miners went down because of halving.
To compensate their expenses, the fees went up so they will stay profitable.
The miners didn't decide the fees in this case. The mempool is unusually full due to the huge volume and there is a backlog of transactions waiting to be cleared. Profitable or not, the miners couldn't decide on the fee rates. The offset of their loss of earnings comes mainly from the difficulty adjustments.