> Instead, if companies give coupons to pay for rent and food, nobody would complain because they wouldn't see the real value of different cities' coupons. Thi

> Instead, if companies give coupons to pay for rent and food, nobody would complain because they wouldn't see the real value of different cities' coupons. This is an awesome observation, but I think it needs the qualification that not all of your salary is spent on COL and that people in high COL areas have an advantage in this regard. If you're saving X% of your salary for vacation, say, it's better to be saving in a high COL area because X will be around the same, but the absolute number will be bigger - and this is money you will not be spending in your area. When I was a PhD student in NYC I was able to travel for more than a month every summer using money I had saved from teaching in NYC. If I had been doing my PhD in a small mid-western college town, I couldn't have done that.