1.- Wrong. If we come to this, then you don’t need a data connection for “setting up the phone in the first place anyway”. Froyo is perfectly usable when roaming without spending a single cent on data. Why Gingerbread isn't? (By the way, “a minute or two” when roaming data can be up to several dollars, depending where.)
wrong. I know several people using Gingerbread phones with all data turned off
2.- Wrong. There are a number of scenarios where you could temporarily be in need to insert your android-contacts-less SIM into a dumphone. So the question is relevant.
I couldnt even think of any scenario where I would do such a thing. I would never put my sim in another person's phone whatever happens (unless perhaps its a great emergency). That's just wrong. You are practically depriving a person of moments when he may need to receive emergency calls. Thats plain unethical by my book.
3.- Same as #2. Anyhow, if you sync your contacts to your Gmail account and then you get yourself a Nokia (for instance), I’m not sure that you can “sync back” your contacts from Gmail.
Sure you can. Symbian supported sync with Google Calendar and Google Contacts even before Nexus One was sold in the market. Not to mention that even with the new Windows Phones, you can import Google Contacts to Windows Live Contacts, as well as other Google data.
4.- Sure. You can also lose your contacts if Billy the Kid shoots you and hits your phone. Anyhow, if you really “don’t have a clue what my point means”, are you sure you've understood at all what my whole post is about?
The only way my contacts are forever lost is if Windows servers, Google servers, both my phones and all 4 computers in the house break down. Pretty unlikely barring an end of the world scenario. This would also be likely for most people who cloud sync
5.- Wrong. There are many possible scenarios where friends or acquaintances would certainly lend you their phones, but not their SIM credit.
Again, there are many instances where people would not let you borrow their phones, but ok, lets say I would borrow someone's phone and my SIM has no contacts. I have credit. Ok lets go browse the internet to Gmail and look at my contacts there. Even feature phones have web browsers now. Opera Mini was specifically designed for use first on dumbphones.
6.- When you’re roaming, often you’re also making lots of new acquaintances and storing a bunch of new numbers in your phonebook, but perhaps you can’t afford roaming data for syncing. Also, not always free wi-fi is available. I guess, if you make 5 grand you can afford it, but maybe even yet you prefer to not pay for syncing.
Hotels would almost always have free wifi. You dont need to be actively syncing to use Google contacts as well. You can have your phone saving all contacts as Google contacts even when data is turned off. It will sync the moment you connect to wifi though, so roaming is still no problem.
In any case, none of your retorts is a good reason to neglect the possibility of storing to SIM. You do realize that there are a huge variety of possible situations where it would be convenient to have contacts in your SIM, and that you might need your information when the cloud isn’t there, right? You’ve been able to imagine a different situation than yours before, right?
2.- What about borrowing someone's dumbphone? Most of my friends, for example, don't have a smartphone.
As I've implicated prior, it would take a great emergency for me to borrow a friend's phone to put my sim in, its not me. Furthermore, even if I borrow a dumphone, its no problem. Even 4 year old dumbphones have web browsers. I can always Go to Gmail to check my contacts.
3.- You mean it's useless... for you, right? But you're aware that there are 100 million Android users in the world, aren't you?
and you are aware that millions of users also stores more than just the name and one number per contact right? In that case, SIM storage is useless for those millions of users as well.
Besides, there is one thing you have not considered with the removal of SIM support on plain Google Android: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Android 4.0 is supposed to be the unification of phone and tablet OS. Now you would know that several tablets and a few phones do not use SIM cards. Retaining the SIM card functionality would create an added feature which is not in general use, especially with the capability to sync contacts to several places already available. So plain Google just removed it and its one less thing for them to worry about. Manufacturers often add it in anyway, so it would not be much of an issue unless you get a Nexus device.
Not that bad, considering that all of it it's true except for -maybe- iOS. One rotten element in the set doesn't change much the validity of the example. 
