Any throwaway account from Google current or former higher ups can chime on this? I can think of one reason is to be keep employees in few locations concentrat

Any throwaway account from Google current or former higher ups can chime on this? I can think of one reason is to be keep employees in few locations concentrated to get some political leverage. Mr.Senator from CA, if you are doing this X, there are 50K of our employees in the State of CA paying taxes so we may have to move them to AZ kind of lobbying. May be some tax rebates or other incentives from state or city. Google wants to maintain a certain strength in certain states -- if their workforce is diluted across US - they may not have these kind of levers. So, they are using COLA based pay to get people to move to their favorite location(s). Or it could be down right -- hey employee X will be paying $10K in less taxes -- how about we get $8K of that. May be petty or may be not!