Salary is a market value. Your arguments read like “if a BigMac costs half a Dollar in a developing country then the BigMac is inherently worth half a dollar and should cost the same in the US”
Were that true, global markets where the location of the seller is immaterial to the utility of the good or service sold and didn't create extra costs to get it to the buyer wouldn't have different rates based on the seller's location, by the Law of One Price.
> Your arguments read like “if a BigMac costs half a Dollar in a developing country then the BigMac is inherently worth half a dollar and should cost the same in the US”
A more precise equivalent would be “there is no rational reason for the same buyer to be willing to pay more to purchase a Big Mac delivered from a neighboring higher CoL city as an identical one delivered with the same latency from a different neigboring community with a lower CoL.” Local prices for Big Macs between countries naturally vary precisely because Big Mac distribution isn't globalized the way remote labor is, and a Big Macs from a McDonald’s in Turkmenistan is not an equivalent substitute for one from a McDonald's next to Market Street for a buyer in
Downtown SF.
Local wage policies for remote work are an effort by employers to present a rationalization to employees not to increase their wage demands to what the globalized market they are actually competing in will support. They will only be able to be maintained so long as remote work isn't widely offered and there isn't a meaningful competitive (on both sides) market; once there are enough competing buyers for any given kind of labor, competition for labor will see the best workers from low-CoL area consistently going to employers that aren't lowballing them.
Were that true, global markets where the location of the seller is immaterial to the utility of the good or service sold and didn't create extra costs to get it to the buyer wouldn't have different rates based on the seller's location, by the Law of One Price.
> Your arguments read like “if a BigMac costs half a Dollar in a developing country then the BigMac is inherently worth half a dollar and should cost the same in the US”
A more precise equivalent would be “there is no rational reason for the same buyer to be willing to pay more to purchase a Big Mac delivered from a neighboring higher CoL city as an identical one delivered with the same latency from a different neigboring community with a lower CoL.” Local prices for Big Macs between countries naturally vary precisely because Big Mac distribution isn't globalized the way remote labor is, and a Big Macs from a McDonald’s in Turkmenistan is not an equivalent substitute for one from a McDonald's next to Market Street for a buyer in Downtown SF.
Local wage policies for remote work are an effort by employers to present a rationalization to employees not to increase their wage demands to what the globalized market they are actually competing in will support. They will only be able to be maintained so long as remote work isn't widely offered and there isn't a meaningful competitive (on both sides) market; once there are enough competing buyers for any given kind of labor, competition for labor will see the best workers from low-CoL area consistently going to employers that aren't lowballing them.