I'd like to ask for some experienced opinions on buying algorithms vs. programming them. Which do you think is more cost effective? There are firms that offer tested algorithms for sale at a yearly cost, and can be downloaded into your code. If you consider the cost of programmers, it would seem a viable option.

My apologies if this was posted twice, the first time I pushed the post button the site gave me an error message, so I figured it didn't post.

Yes in most cases you can and should bye sofware instead of starting programming from point 0. In Sweden with have around 70 000 programmers (resulting in 128 inhabitants/programmer). Some tasks are of course very specific so starting from scratch is needed.
Most countries have some language problem. For Sweden it is åäö or ÅÄÖ. In Windows and DOS with 8-bit ASCII it is easy but not in Unix with 7-bit ASCII. Normally Java is a problem here. So something has to be fixed locally. Regarding salary and tax reports we new regulations several time every year.So a local programmer will not be out of work.