> At the same living arrangement? No, but you answer the question of what that's still a fair comparison yourself: > What you have to include is weather, cult

> At the same living arrangement? No, but you answer the question of what that's still a fair comparison yourself: > What you have to include is weather, cultural opportunities, etc. Turns out that a small apartment feels a lot less like a jail when the weather's bearable almost the entire year and there's world-class hiking 30 minutes away. > And the marginal tax rate is higher. 1. Which I include. In the worst case, this merely wipes out the delta between the real bonuses you get on the coast and the (conspicuously tiny) bonuses you get in the mid-west. The difference in tax is gone before you even start comparing salaries! 2. And that's not even fair to the coasts, because higher taxes do, in fact, buy some differences in quality of life.