If you mean $30-40 for the wire and 0.2% for the trade, that's not steep at all.
Try sending money abroad any other way, and you're likely to pay around 3-8%. Or much more if the destination is one of the messed up African countries.
I assume the 3-8% you're talking about is the exchange rate but unless the place your sending money has a good local exchange with liquidity you're going to pay that anyhow having the money sent from the exchange to you.
No, because Bitstamp accepts USD, so you don't lose anything on the conversion rate (which is a crazy hidden fee that banks never mention).
Also Bitstamp has the best EUR-USD conversion rate I've seen. My bank's conversion rate is 2.5% worse than Bitstamp's, which is a huge freaking difference.
> I assume the 3-8% you're talking about is the exchange rate
For wire transfers - yes. For other means of transfer like PayPal, WesternUnion, MoneyGram there's also a huge direct fee, and a horrible conversion rate.