It certainly doesn't help matters that housing prices have massively outpaced inflation for many years. Cost of living still mattered when the brackets were set

It certainly doesn't help matters that housing prices have massively outpaced inflation for many years. Cost of living still mattered when the brackets were set, of course, but there weren't the common and enormous differentials that we see now. At $250k it's perhaps less relevant, but it's basically impossible to assess how "high income" $50k/year is when rent is anywhere from <15% to >50% of that value.