That may be, but first-class cities concentrate a lot more of the most desirable economic opportunities. Living in the Silicon Valley and SF area would be compl

That may be, but first-class cities concentrate a lot more of the most desirable economic opportunities. Living in the Silicon Valley and SF area would be completely irrational on all grounds, except for the fact that you're within driving distance of 900 of the world's top 1000 technology employers (figurative example, I wouldn't have an exact count). Similar arguments can be made for entertainment, music and film in LA, and for finance, fashion and media in NYC. Yeah, Charlotte, Tampa, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix are a lot cheaper. But that's in large part because they're not SF or NYC. :) First-class cities can literally provide 10x-20x the value for a lot of folks. I have no dog in this fight; I lived in Atlanta for ten years and now live in a small-medium college town. Being self-employed for a long time now, I have no intention of moving to SF or NYC. But I can certainly see why someone would. That said, the US has a unique advantage here compared to most of the world, "developed" and otherwise; it is very decentralised economically. In the grand scheme of things here, life in Charlotte just isn't _that_ different from NYC. In many other economies, a sizable chunk of the GDP is parked in the capital and maybe one or two other top-tier cities, and the difference between life there and life anywhere else—anywhere else at all, even another fairly large city—is considerable. In my native USSR—and as I understand it, its descendant Russia—there a huge chasm between "Moscow" and "not Moscow", even though there are dozens of other sizable cities in Russia. The Soviet economy was exceptionally geographically centralised, so makes for a very extreme example, but I think you get my point.