After reading this, I'm pretty sure we generally agree but I didn't really say much in my first comment. Anything approaching full time work is really going to work differently than Rent-A-Coder style projects. I would expect the costs for my mythical Romanians to approach the costs of an American like your roommate, though their actual hourly rate might be cheaper.

I will try to be more explicit next time I make a throwaway one-line comment.