If that were actually the case, there would be very very few programmers making $300k. Market forces (demand for talented software engineers) led to those high salaries. That's a tangible observation supporting the logic behind "you get what you pay for".
In the global market, sure. American salaries in general for many fields are statistical outliers compared to the global market, even Europe.
Within the US however, while SV salaries are the highest, that's not the only city with 6 figure salaries as the norm for software engineers. Places like NYC, Boston, and Seattle have been there for a while, and Austin/Chicago/LA are close to, if not already averaging that too. This is especially true if you work for one of the major tech companies in those cities.
Go look at the salaries posted on www.levels.fyi in those cities and you'll see that SV is by no means an outlier when it comes to 6 figure salaries.
