What would change if programming was 4x faster than it is now (e.g. because of imaginary better tools)? Would you do 2 designers with 1 programmer? Could you offload some of the designer work to programmers?
In my experience, designers are slower than programmers. It depends on the product but usually it takes some time to tweak all Internet Explorer issues.
To hijack the thread a bit: designer's tools are horrible. Photoshop misleads you, and designs done from PSD are easy to be poorly implemented. On the other hand, CSS/XHTML slows your creativity down.
I find this is an enormous opportunity for profit.
If I'd have to give any hints, I'd stick with what I wrote above, expanding it a bit.
Photoshop is a handy tool but it tends to attract people who are not web designers (there was a thread few days ago that you should hire a web designer for web design; a logo designer for logo etc.); also, it requires some experience with XHTML/CSS to get the fonts right, or realize that grid matters.
On the other hand, current CSS frameworks are rather painful to work with. I saw Blueprint hijacked million times, and the whole reloading concept is a big headache for non tech savvy folks. (unfortunately, the same applies to Compass)