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Editing is the serious drain here
Actually, it's not. Scanlators have to redraw the pages in high quality because 1) of problems with the raw scans (gutter shadows, dirt, blurry areas) and/or 2) removal of speech and SFX. When the editor for an English company receives the pages, they are 1) high quality scans with NO gutter shadows or dirt and 2) sometimes already missing the speech and SFX, because these are literally the raws from the original Japanese publisher. It is very easy for the English company to procure optimal quality raws from the original publisher/mangaka, so an official editor's job is much easier than a scanlation editor's job.
Furthermore, unless editors were paid on a per-page basis the way translators often are, then your whole minimum wage argument does not make sense. Minimum wage means you are paid the same amount per day regardless of if you edited 1 page for 8 hours or 24 pages for 8 hours. If I was getting paid to same to edit 1 page in high quality or do 24 pages in low quality, then I would hands down take the 1 page in high quality, and I'd imagine most people would feel the same way.
As for "good editors", I don't want to insult any editors here, but speaking from experience, it's hardly difficult to learn. If you want a guide, the one Storm in Heaven has is wonderful. With the economy the way it is, I imagine a lot of people would be willing to do this job instead of flipping burgers or waiting tables. At least you get to sit down and it looks better on your resume (eg. "graphic artist" or "computer design specialist" LOL).
The real costs are the licensing fees and whoever it was that did the crappy economics calculation and determined that MC = MR when P = $10. I think they need to sit down again and redo all their math and double check the price-demand curve because the current one does not seem to be working.