Anytime I see statements like these - "for the low cost of living and high quality of life" coupled with "a desirable place to live in the first place" - I have

Anytime I see statements like these - "for the low cost of living and high quality of life" coupled with "a desirable place to live in the first place" - I have to wonder about the economic thinking from the person saying it. What do you think is a better metric of "desirable place to live" than cost of living? People are willing to pay 2, 3, 4 times as much to live in coastal California? Seems like it's still VERY desirable... So in fact, what people moving are doing is completely rational: they want to bring the things they like because they still desired to live there, other people just had more money... (this part does expose one of the cruelties: people with even more money than the people CURRENTLY in CA can price them out to TX or wherever, where they can then price the current folks there out, etc! But I don't see how you can then possibly view the solution as more free market policies and such...) It's the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" of city politics discussions... somehow people who otherwise praise economic trends that cause appreciating property values suddenly hate it when it gets too expensive for them!