The difference between having a non-technical person and someone who is capable of understanding the code being generated and the systems running it is immense, and will continue to be so over the foreseeable future.

Just because somebody has a bunch of power tools doesn't mean I'd ask them to build my house.

Anyone that only costs $30k-50k would either be doing this part-time, or have some limit that prevented them from earning $150k-250k.

Or not living in US?