Well, maybe 1.5 the salary, but I bet total comp at Google in SF is way more than 1.5x best Ohio employers. But there is also California weather and NY culture that account for part of the cost of living premium. Don't think that has any value ? Great for you, you can live in Decatur. Ilinois.
Of course, but Google is an outlier in just about every sense. Most people in San Francisco don't earn the equivalent of Google's total comp.
Also, what's this nonsense about Decatur, Illinois? St. Louis and Cincinnati and Nashville and Pittsburgh and so on all have a bunch of pre-WWII, walkable, interesting neighborhoods, with little restaurants and bars and people putting on poetry readings and bands playing in basement clubs and jazz quartets playing at wine and cheese parties and concert halls that host national acts and major sports franchises and yuppies and hipsters and Python Meetups and comedy clubs and big pretty parks and coffee shops and whatever else you can think of.
No, they are emphatically not like San Francisco or NYC. But don't be silly. Millions of people live in those places. Did you really think they're all just skipping stones and waiting to die?
I'm quite glad I grew up here, because I think I'd be just the type of asshole who'd make jokes about Decatur, Illinois had I not. And you know what? I'd have been wrong.
Sure, they do have all those neighborhoods. The price differential reflects what people are willing to pay for one vs the other. The point about Decatur, Illinois is simply that Decatur Illinois lacks a lot of what SF has, which is why it's cheaper. It's a factual statement, not a value judgement
You'll get no argument from me here. But I think an erroneous value judgement is what's driving that demand. San Francisco is an incredible place. And a Ferrari is an incredible car. But lots of normal people would be better off realizing they can't afford the Ferrari and buying a Camry. It's not as bad as they think.
And to really strain this metaphor, people who have all their wealth tied up in a Ferrari would be a lot better off if they sold it and used the gains to live a comfortable life.
On good trips there, I can certainly understand the attractions of the Bay area (though I'm probably less sold on the city itself). However IMO way too many people, especially in tech circles, have convinced themselves that life isn't worth living if they can't live and work there whatever the other lifestyle tradeoffs. (Which leads to the corollary that someone needs to do something to make it possible for them to do so.)
You're getting 1.5x the income (usually with longer hours) and paying 5x for the house.
You're also paying more for other random stuff like groceries, eating out, gasoline, electricity, etc.
You're also paying lots more for taxes. Some states have no income tax. Some states have no sales tax. Some have neither!