[opportune]

>The very talented individuals who stay "home" get pretty much the same pay the individual Whould in an inflated area, but the individuals peers don't.

Depends on where the home is. Short of starting your own company in your hometown, in a lot of places there just aren't comparable jobs.

Also even if you are working somewhere with an inflated cost of living, the key thing is that you can save a lot more money in absolute terms, and then later in life you can move back to a lower COL area. Your crappy $1.2m house in the Peninsula can be traded for a mansion in other parts of the country, and if you are putting ~30% of your inflated salary in stocks vs. 30% of your non-inflated salary, you will have a lot more stocks when you leave the inflated area.