Sometimes you just have to accept the current pricing and buy what you need to buy (assuming you need to buy anything at all).

7 years ago it was the same price, but then again, the last 7 years have involved accelerated inflation. So, the same price is actually a lower price.

If you're looking for a card in the sane $300 area, the Intel ARC B580 (12GB) or the RX 9060XT (8GB) are a reasonable value. If you want 12GB+ from Nvidia or AMD the used market in previous generations is a good place to look: maybe something like a RTX 3060Ti (12GB) or RX6800XT (16GB).

I personally don't think the GPU market is incredibly miserable. Maybe I am just used to the pain or something? Nvidia has a bit of a tax where but something like the RX 9070XT is basically the 3rd fastest gaming GPU money can buy and it's around $700. (I'm not sure why the 5070ti costs $200 more even given Nvidia's software advantages. It performs almost identically it just doesn't make purchase sense)