Making raw potatoes available to buy also requires some local labour and renting a local warehouse / supermarket. I think labour and rent are upstream of ~all of the differences in local purchasing power. To me, the main question is why so much software is being built in SF as opposed to cheaper areas, and I find this confusing but I think the bay is something like a schelling point for tech talent and tech firms, and remote work unfortunately just doesn’t work well enough. And something similar is true for other expensive high-income places.
Making raw potatoes available to buy also requires some local labour and renting a local warehouse / supermarket. I think labour and rent are upstream of ~all of the differences in local purchasing power. To me, the main question is why so much software is being built in SF as opposed to cheaper areas, and I find this confusing but I think the bay is something like a schelling point for tech talent and tech firms, and remote work unfortunately just doesn’t work well enough. And something similar is true for other expensive high-income places.