> they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.

While I agree you wouldn't need to worry about affording SV-grade housing costs, I feel like these discussions leave out a couple of things:

* The CoL is going up everywhere. Food, medical care etc... None of it is getting cheaper.

* Good houses in good school systems with reasonable access are still expensive in many areas of the country.

* It's kind of ridiculous to see companies pushing the narrative that they can suddenly pay everyone less based on arbitrary geography when the average revenue/profit generated per engineer is often many, many multiples of their total compensation costs.