It's not about take-home for the individual, it's about the fact that the per-hour price point at the point of sale, even for highly-competitive services, bottoms out in the $80-100/hr range. You just can't really sustain a legitimate business on less.

Lots of freelancers set their price with their salary in mind instead of considering the several moving parts involved in running a business. It's useful to consider that all the local small businesses around you, the type of places that have already been competed down to the price floor, still need to be making around $100/hr to stay afloat.

That’s fair. I shouldn’t have compared earning potential and said something along the lines of what people pay for services in the marketplace. I was thinking in my head about comparing the cost of a developer to the cost of other things in the physical world. As noted in another comment reply these other jobs have a lot of overhead as well.

Your cheap shot that doesn’t point to data fosters similar opinions about you.