>If you have a factory in the middle of Iowa you can't offer $110k/yr and expect people from SF or NYC to move out there, despite the huge gains relative to COL

>If you have a factory in the middle of Iowa you can't offer $110k/yr and expect people from SF or NYC to move out there, despite the huge gains relative to COL. Absolutely wrong. If you offer enough money, people will move there. I have zero desire to move to Iowa personally. But if a company there offered me $400k to take a job there, I'd do it. I can't say that I'd stay there until retirement, but I'd stay a year minimum. That much money makes it worth it. I'm sure many other people would agree. For that much, I could save a lot of money even after just one year, and then go back to one of the coasts where I'm happier and make a big down-payment on a house. It's very simple supply-and-demand. There's a limited amount of qualified talent, so if you really want to hire them, you need to raise your prices. If that means you're paying the engineers much more than their managers or even the executives, then so be it. If you don't want to pay that much, then you don't really need them that badly. And if you think $400k is really that much money, compare that to how much they'll pay for some CNC machine or other specialized equipment.