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OK then, if the market set rate ONLY on lowest cost - so the market is clearly saying there is no value for being better - at least not a vlaue that the market is willing to pay for. So if it is a cost based only competition - why harping on how American programmers are better and how much the outsourcer sucks when the market is saying it doesn't care enough to pay for it? To the market, it's really better only if the market think it's better and is willing to pay for it. And "PatrioticAmerican", if you say the market is what it is because the client only has so much to spend; in that case, it's not the client or market intentionally push the rate down to squeeze out a fatter margin, it's just the market finding its own equalibrum.

There is no intrinsic value to being a programmer, or a marketer, or a burger flipper, no matter how much work you out into it or how much you may have made previously, nobody is intrinsically deserving being paid $5 an hr or 500K a year. It's just supply and demand, no?

If the market oesn't value what you are offering, you can't make the market to assign a value to something it doesn't value, and you can't say this or that deserved to be valued at such and such because of such and such value above and beyond the lowest cost when the market says it simply doesn't care about any value other than the lowest cost.

If I build a widget and want to charge $1000 a piece for it and nobody wants to buy my widget for $1000, am I still correct in insisting that my widget is in fact worth $1000? ... I'm talking about what it's worth in the marketplace, not how much investment I have put into the widget, which may be $1 or $1000,000, but my cost has nothing to do with how the market assign value to my widget.

If I happen to think I am worth 100K a year but the market says no, am I still right in insisting that I am in fact worth 100K per year?

"OK then, if the market set rate ONLY on lowest cost "

Are you always an extremist? Thre is no such thing as "ONLY" in any market or event in life. The fact is that cost is the primary factor in contracting, today. Remember the dynamics of the market, it isn't static. Those lower priced companies are also selling their value against ours. They convince the client that they can get the same or better value for less. Usually, they fail to deliver.

Sorry you got spoiled by the 1990's and the "anything goes" when it came to pricing, but the party is over. Price matters, the developer market is saturated with unemployed developers, companies are no longer cash rich and are pulling back their IT spending (Considerably!), so supply outweights demand by a large margin.

"willing to pay for it."

Again, money doesn't grow on trees. Just because you are "willing" to pay for it doesn't mean that you "can" pay for it. The fact is that companies are paying plenty, but under qualified teenagers want $100K to write Java and Visual Basic.

"If I happen to think I am worth 100K a year but the market says no, am I still right in insisting that I am in fact worth 100K per year? "

Aboslutely, so you have made my point. I didn't lower wages by asking for too less or not selling the value. The market has decided the value just isn't there, and, frankly, it usually isn't.

I have watched time and time again companies getting screwed by high priced development that resulted in no product or a lousy product. The engineering industry shot itself in the foot by letting any idiot who could spell "computer" enter the market.