Have you looked into working remotely? It can be tougher for international developers but there are companies out there that will pay American rates.

Are you willing to say what country and what company you work for?

At least which country...

That's great pay. I know a lot of developers in the Philippines who make around USD $300 / month.

$300 a month is astoundingly low. What can they be doing for that amount of money, I'm amazed the cost is living is so low. If they got remote jobs to first world countries they could make 30 times as much if they could do java or c++.

There's an agency here which employs developers for different sorts of client work. Some of them I talked to were doing Javsacript and others were .Net. The employer is Swedish.

Other employers are small businesses which have a need for a developer and pay the lowest they can get away with.

Cost of living is really low here. You can get cozy two room apartment for under $200 / month. There are a lot of "boarding houses" where you can get a room and a shared bathroom for $35 / month. A small studio apartment may be as cheap as $100 / month. Young adults here will often say with their family though unless they are working in a different city.

It's difficult to get jobs like that though.

Yeah, but a 1000 a month for a remote worker who can do java would be feasible. Think about how much you could outsource with just one person's salary. Of course that's the fantasy of moving work away. I don't want that exactly, I'm fortunate and privileged to be an american programmer. But I need to justify my high salary by being very productive, careful, use good techniques and use good engineering practices.

Those are American salaries, you should account for cost of living and possible lack of employer-covered pension savings cost with that.