First let me say that rent and real estate should go way down and Seattle should make it easier for people like your friend to live there. Second, there is no

First let me say that rent and real estate should go way down and Seattle should make it easier for people like your friend to live there. Second, there is no direct connection between work done, value added + money earned. The connection is a loose correlation at best. As an example, you can do back-breaking labour painstakingly paving roads with one cobblestone at a time, 16 hours a day, for decades. Or you can write a dozen lines of code that speeds up a critical business process. One is super hard and makes little difference in the world, and thus pays almost nothing. The other is easy if you know how and adds enough value that there's scope for lots of money to be involved.