It's true that a dollar is different to a different person, but I don't buy this argument.
To google, who is paying its workers, the dollar is the same no matter where you work, if you're working remote either way.
> someone who is in NC (or a lower cost-of-living area), if they're paid the same as someone in the Bay Area, is effectively being paid more for doing the same work.
Yes. This is true. Also, someone who lives in a small apartment and doesn't own a car is paid more, even within just the bay area. Someone who has a child and pays for childcare, or a parent in a nursing home that they pay for, is getting less purchasing power for the same salary.
The cost of living varies by location, but also by lifestyle, life circumstances, and many other things. What things do we change it for? The exact same argument you make above could be used to argue that we should pay workers with a child more, workers with college loans more, or workers who choose to live in downtown SF vs the outskirts of oakland more.
On the other hand, making the pay identical for the same work done, irrespective of life circumstances and location, is straightforward and has none of these weird questions associated with it.
I don't think your argument quite works in this case.
> Someone who has a child and pays for childcare, or a parent in a nursing home that they pay for, is getting less purchasing power for the same salary.
This is not what purchasing power means.
It's true that different people have different lifestyles and different costs of living, but even given that fact, different areas simply have different purchasing power outside of that.
To be a little clearer:
Bay Area worker A lives in a 1BR apartment with no car.
Bay Area worker B lives in a house with a kid.
A and B have different costs associated with their lifestyles, but their dollars go just as far. A just has more money left over. If A has a kid, or decides to get a house, they will end up in (roughly) the same situation as B.
Meanwhile, North Carolina worker C lives in a 1BR apartment with no car. They have a lot of money left over.
But if C decides they want a house and a kid, they will still pay less than B does, and less than A would have to pay to upgrade.
Do you see what I'm getting at? Workers in a lower-cost area simply get more for their salary, independent of their life choices.
> Workers in a lower-cost area simply get more for their salary, independent of their life choices.
I would argue that where you live is about as much of a life choice as whether you have a child.
Is "I live in oakland vs downtown SF" a life choice, or is that independent of life choices? That seems like it has the same tradeoff more or less as living in SF vs NC, but doesn't have a change in pay because it's "close enough" to SF still.
> different areas simply have different purchasing power outside of that.
I agree that avocado toast is $15 in SF and $8 in NC, so you do have different purchasing power. This applies less and less to stuff though. The latest PS5 or a month of a c5.xlarge AWS instance for your side project or month of netflix all cost the same no matter where you live.
Why do we care about the cost of living wrt location though, and not wrt any other factors? I choose to live in NC, so things cost less. Why pay me less?
I didn't choose to have some illness that maxes out my deductible each year, but I get paid the same total amount as my coworker without this illness, and thus my effective salary is lower. My cost of living is higher because of this immutable characteristic (a health problem), which is far less a lifestyle choice than where I live.
There are many factors that change the effective value of a dollar to a worker, and it seems quite weird to care about location only, and nothing else, from the perspective of "fairness".
To be clear about my opinion as to why this happens: I don't think this is actually about CoL or financial fairness, as you seem to espouse. IMO, it's entirely about competing with other companies for the same talent pool, and those other companies currently being either local, or also doing CoL adjustment. That's the only thing that makes sense (that it's done because everyone does it). This also neatly explains the Oakland/SF split being different than the SF/NC split.
To google, who is paying its workers, the dollar is the same no matter where you work, if you're working remote either way.
> someone who is in NC (or a lower cost-of-living area), if they're paid the same as someone in the Bay Area, is effectively being paid more for doing the same work.
Yes. This is true. Also, someone who lives in a small apartment and doesn't own a car is paid more, even within just the bay area. Someone who has a child and pays for childcare, or a parent in a nursing home that they pay for, is getting less purchasing power for the same salary.
The cost of living varies by location, but also by lifestyle, life circumstances, and many other things. What things do we change it for? The exact same argument you make above could be used to argue that we should pay workers with a child more, workers with college loans more, or workers who choose to live in downtown SF vs the outskirts of oakland more.
On the other hand, making the pay identical for the same work done, irrespective of life circumstances and location, is straightforward and has none of these weird questions associated with it.