> exurbs with their cheap sprawling subdivisions and giant SUVs benefit from it I guess I'm with you to the extent this means they "recoup a larger proportion

> exurbs with their cheap sprawling subdivisions and giant SUVs benefit from it I guess I'm with you to the extent this means they "recoup a larger proportion of their losses on these pointless endeavors". > Your not being in San Francisco costs the government $30k/year. Any subsidy below $30k/year that gets you to that more productive job is profitable for the taxpayer. With this I agree, although it seems at odds with what I think you were saying earlier, that tax should be COL-adjusted. If this were the case, it would no longer be true. > People are most needed where they would create the most value, regardless of cost of living. Nope! True, this would be best from the government's perspective. From the individual's perspective, it is most rational to live where they have the biggest surplus of wages over costs. Doesn't do you much good to make $1M if it's $1.5M for a crappy apartment and basic food. Unless you are separating the concept of "people are needed most at X" from the concept of "it is most economically rational to live at X". > imagine someone who costs taxpayers $20k/year in Appalachia, but could generate $30k/year ($5k in taxes) as a barista at the Googleplex OK, yes, but this sets up a mostly false dichotomy between "employed in SV (etc)" or "unemployed in Appalachia". There are a lot of places in the US that are less dysfunctional than either one of those two places. > I simply argue that subsidies to get people to high-productivity cities are much less costly (they can even be profitable!) than subsidies to help people stay in low-productivity situations. It just seems self-contradictory. You say that people in SV pay more tax than people not in SV. That's right. But then you say people in SV should be subsidized, which removes the logical basis you're using to argue they should be there in the first place. It is helpful to remember that subsidizing someone's COL in a low-cost area is by definition going to cost less than someone in a high-cost area. In short, if we HAVE to subsidize people a lot, then we should subsidize them to live in Appalachia, not SV. But if only a little (i.e., they still pay tax in net), then it could make economic sense to subsidize people in SV. Ironically, by this logic, it makes more sense to subsidize the $90K person in SV than the $30K person.