Yes but the cross-section of people who prefer to live in the midwest and talented engineers is much smaller and the main reason why it's difficult to do that.
Sv isn't special anymore. You might not want to live in the Midwest. But plenty of talented people do. I would want a 7 figure salary to live in sv for many obvious reasons
Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Twitter all have offices in the Detroit metro area.
Any medium sized city will have at least a few insurance companies looking for developers. Not to mention other random tech jobs and startups, especially if it's a college town. I worked in Lansing MI for 3 years after college and it was one of my favorite jobs I've ever had.
Madison Wisconsin, Omaha Nebraska, Minneapolis Minnesota, St. Louis Missouri, are all places in the Midwest that are going to have plenty of tech jobs.
Then of course, there's Chicago, which is a bit less affordable than the rest of the Midwest, but still better than San Francisco or NYC. They have a huge tech scene.