this

if someone's bringing "google payscale" for comparison... well that's not some average joe...

why not just bring Bill Gates and say "everything -- including private jet -- is dirt cheap" ?

$8k per year simply doesn't make sense for 95% of the programmers. For a lot of developing countries, that's more than a well-paying programmer's annual salary...

I presented a conditional calculation using numbers contextually-relevant to a forum run by a company that funds US tech startups.

IF you are such a company, THEN you only need very minor productivity improvements to justify such a price difference. IF you are such a company, THEN such costs are well within the cost of doing business. IF you are NOT then you are free to apply your own numbers to your situation.

However, the overwhelming majority of companies that fall into the applicable category outright refuse to even consider the possibility of a 8 k$ capital expense on software development tooling out of the absolutely foolish belief that such expenditure CAN NOT be justified as such a cost could not possibly be recouped in benefits or out of the absolutely foolish belief that a product that costs 100$ must be 100x better than a product that costs 1$ to be justified, and thus a product that costs money must be infinitely better than a product that is free to be justified.

It is absolutely management incompetence for US employers to just shut down upon hearing about a 8 k$ capital expenditure instead of doing a proper cost-benefit analysis to determine if such expenditures would be justified.