[cbozeman]

It's not the proximity to money, it's the real estate tied to doing that job.

If you want to be the receptionist at Goldman Sachs at their headquarters at 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, then you're looking at paying $616,250 for a 556 sq. ft. studio apartment. And that's just the housing. If you want to live within 30 minutes of work, you can get that number down to $400,000, but that's also a studio apartment.

Then you have to consider some place to eat - or you bring your own meals.

What about clothing? You need clothing that looks the part.

It's the proximity to real estate, which I guess you could argue is a proximity to "lots of money" as you put it, but... not reeeaaaally...

[Tade0]

Sure, but real estate is expensive in those places for a reason - it being typically because a sufficient number of people with lots of money want to buy it.

[AnthonyMouse]

There is only a weak correlation between local income and housing costs, and most of that is that it's hard to get extreme housing prices in areas with low income, rather than that housing in high income areas is inherently required to be expensive.

For example, Boston has a higher per-capita income than NYC but somewhat lower housing costs, and Austin has around the same per-capita income as Los Angeles but significantly lower housing costs. Because it's a lot easier to build housing in Texas than in California.