The fee system is certainly a point of discussion at the moment for the reference client developers. In a merge yesterday, the hardcoded KB fee in was brought down (0.005 to 0.001), so this will be in 0.8.2 and given that the miners go along, this should alleviate fee worries for a while.
However this solution of hardcoding a number is not sustainable. There can't be a new software rollout every time the price in $ changes. In the long run, it need to be the miners that determine the fee in a free market system and broadcast this somehow so that it can be determined dynamically.
I recommend searching the forums if you want more details; this has been argued to death, and it can't be solved by arguing about it more