[nrmitchi]

> In reality companies had to pay a premium in order to demand that an employee lives in certain geographic area so that they show up every day in a certain office building. Depending on the location of the building, the premium can be very high.

100% agreed with this. I personally see no issue in paying a premium if an employer is asking for something extra, like being in a specific location, or working odd hours, paying a premium is reasonable. There are many reasons why a company may want someone to be on-site in a specific city; this applies if the city is SF, or a small city.

The issue that I personally have is when location is not a factor, but is still factored in to "location dependent pay". Pay someone in SF more because it's important to you for them to be phsycially present? Sure. Pay someone in Oklahoma less than someone in Austin, despite the fact that neither of their locations makes a difference to their work? Now you're openning yourself up to implicit discrimination and "unfair" conditions.