What about the same thought experiment with different items: If $100k is what you're willing to pay for a Tesla Model S but it only costs $60k, it's completely

What about the same thought experiment with different items: If $100k is what you're willing to pay for a Tesla Model S but it only costs $60k, it's completely ridiculous for you to walk into the store and say "Ok I would give you $100k if you charged me that much, but I'll pay you $60k instead because that's all you charge". If it makes economic sense for you to pay $100k for that car, then paying the lower amount of $60k that the store charges is just a jerk move. Doesn't really make sense in this context. At the end of the day, salary is a lot more fuzzy than an item in a store with a set price, but it's still dictated by market forces like everything else. > In practice I wouldn't do this. I'd simply walk away from a company that uses this offensive hiring practice on me. That's great and that's exactly the thing that would change how the market works. If this does end up happening and enough people are in demand enough even living in low COL places, the market for tech workers will adapt and become more national. It feels like we're at a bit of a discontinuity point right now where nobody knows if labor markets for knowledge work will continue to be locally defined as they always have been, or are becoming more national. What will dictate this is people like you and me comparing our best offers, doing what's best for us, and seeing where we end up. > it feels like these tech companies are saying "Yeah we're going to actively try to keep the wealth created by our business models concentrated in the coastal cities we like, and keep the rest of the country poor." I guess can see that perspective, but it's really beside the point. This is the collective behavior of everyone driving the market like it always is, it won't ultimately just be up to a couple of executives to decide. Trust me, us folks living in the coastal cities have our own pet peeves from our perspective that we can complain about all day too. We pay a lot more in federal taxes relative to the benefits we get than any other part of the country. We are nearly an order of magnitude less represented in congress and by our electoral college votes, because empty land is worth as much as people in the US. But again none of these things are really relevant to the topic at hand.