That only matters if you spend the majority of your income. For many high paying tech workers the amount you save matters more and doesn’t change enough comparatively if your rent doubles for example.
Sure and that’s still not the majority of your income over a 10+ yr period if you’re getting paid good bay area wages as a senior+ engineer.
Not to mention that buying a house isn’t a requirement of living in a location (and isn’t the right financial choice for many places when comparing to rent).
A decent house in the Bay Area is >$2M. Why would I pay that when I can make the same money and buy a much better house for $500k, work from home, not have a commute (which is hideous in the BA) and not have some little micro manager breathing down my neck all day? It's a massive quality of life improvement all around.
We’re talking about trade offs here right? Not saying you get everything.
But no I wouldn’t live in rural Arizona over the Bay Area or most cities unless there was a very strong extra reason to live there (like a manhattan project) and definitely not for a pay cut even if cost of living was near 0.
Although I think most people in a major urban metro (broadly--not necessarily living in a city) probably don't really want to move to the mountains someplace. I'm well out of the city--where my job mostly never was anyway--but I like being able to drive in in 90 minutes or so and the other advantages that a major metro offers.