[verall]

It's not a coastal thing, its just "any major city" thing. 50k is not enough salary to buy a better-than-median home in any of the major Texas cities (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). It might have been enough in El Paso, but probably not since the recent housing bubble.

Sure, not everyone lives in a major city. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a line cook to make $50k in Victoria or Amarillo. But in these places, they are not being paid the ~25-30k which could be equivalent to about $50k in the city (which still isn't enough to buy a house). They are being paid $7.25 an hour and the tips aren't so good.

You totally miss the parents point, which is that most restaurant workers are barely paid enough to rent and eat, to make the point that the US has a diversity of CoL.