The local developers are all employed (if you're a developer, check your email). Anyways, I wouldn't be able to afford a local developer even if I wanted to at this stage. It's not a just a question of being cheap for many of us, it's a matter of being able to get our projects off the ground in the first place.

That's a wild guess and IMHO very wrong. I get that you may not have a lot of resources, but those places normally pay badly even for 3rd world countries.

Saying they're all employed it's a rationalization people make to feel less guilty.

Paying people to code less than the ones that cut your lawn is wrong no matter what the reason is.

Actually, I'm paying very near my own salary. And I cut my own lawn.

Maybe you are, but in my experience 99.9% of the contractors of those places don't pay well because they don't have to. Most of the time there is someone more desperate that lowers the bid just to get the job. If everyone paid decently that would be a whole new story.