If that happened to me I'd not want to deal with that again either.
What has made arch work for me is BTRFS filesystem with the grub module grub-btrfs. It gives you BTRFS snapshots you can load into at grub and with snapper and auto snap it will automatically create a restore point before updating.
It's worked flawlessly and thanks to BTRFS black magic the snapshots don't take up much storage space. I also recommend BTRFS assistant in the aur if you don't mind using a gui.
If you want an easy arch setup + friendly community forums + easy BTRFS setup I can't recommended EndevourOS enough.
The gas prices are mostly controlled by the major oil companies. If the government does not play ball and let them get away with murder they raise it, and social media is filled with people blaming the government when all they wanted to restrict drilling or not let them hoover up more land.
It sucks because it's a good thing if gas prices were not subsidized and if the government could tell them no, but we forced to be reliant on low prices increasing the gas prices effects the people making the lowest wages first.