You're welcome to fly to East Asia/South Asia/Africa and buy their comparatively cheap groceries every time you need to restock the fridge. I'm sure this will be a net-positive for your budget.

if you make 1000$ a month and a bottle of water costs 20 cents and I make 10$ a month and a bottle of water costs 2 cents, who is paying more?

Producer prices and transport prices in the west are also higher. It's harder to sell cheaply. Worker wages, more regulation, etc.

It is not possible to sell cheap stuff in the west at a profit, just try, you will fail, there is competition.

We are not accepting it, nobody can afford it anymore, demand is being destroyed and company earnings are falling. Prices will eventually go down, but they were not super high because of a scam or gouging or price fixing, the market price just rose because of high demand and high production cost, worker shortage, energy prices, etc, it had nothing to do with choice or preference or culture