You underestimate steroids.
HN user
crosscompile
The vast majority of my spending is not on consumer goods. I accept your point that I don't know the actual numbers for typical people.
There are countries where all of the largest expenditures (except oil) are for products produced domestically by the non-poor classes.
Even here in the US. The only significant things that I, personally, spend money on that are significantly made overseas are my car, oil, and computer. Even if the price of those all doubled, it would still be only a small part of my budget.
The outsourcing epidemic is somewhat overstated.
I have a community that grew to 50,000 members in the first year and still growing, but now much more slowly. Please tell me where this friend is that I can sell it to. I've made some attempts at monetizing it, made about 50cents per user. However, just lost day job pay vs. the time put into it blows away any revenue or buyout I could hope to receive.
For a while I thought that it would at least reflect well on my resume. I've had it on my resume for a while now and no one has given a damn. No one person has even clicked the link...
To advertisers it's worth dirt because it's mostly just existing members visiting again and again.
The valuation of online sites really presents a "Winner takes all" effect.
So, why would someone shut their site down? I think there is a Picasso quote to this effect. The idea is that it's an insult to the value of your time, and to your entire field to sell it at 100x less than it cost you to make.
Now lets see being able to manually set your status as "away" in gmail chat. PLEASE.
Certainly not.