No. These are shitty capitalist ploys trying to tell you the above is true when it's blatantly false. And well, they'd work you for no money, but they wouldn't have workers.
If anything, I'd claim to live in a high CoL area while being in the Midwest. They get their quality work, I get my commensurate compensation. Fuck them for thinking otherwise.
As others mentioned, if Google ignored supply and demand and paid for quality of work only, why would they pay everyone the high rates that were originally set by supply and demand in Silicon Valley? They’d pay a normal living wage for someone in India.
On the other hand, in theory the bottom markets will see their rates rise quickly (because they merged into one wider remote market) if remote is as popular as it apparently is.
Your compensation is not absolute dollars but what you can get for those dollars.
Ideally the same dollar would get you the same everywhere in the world. That is not the case atm.
Instead, people at your new location will provide the same quality of work for fewer dollars, because they see what they can get for those dollars. That is your capitalist competition.
Well, actually it is.