Since many of ethereums transactions are from smart contract that use lots of gas, looking at the average transaction fee is misleading. Check ethgasstation.info for the transaction cost of a simple transaction. $0.08 will get you confirmed in the next block, and $0.02 will get you confirmed in 15 min.

That's fair, but that is just the cost right now though. The gas price necessary to get into the next few blocks has varied a lot over the past couple of months. Ethereum is definitely not immune to transaction cost difficulties as currently designed.