Cost of living is hard to account for; it's definitely not just some percentage multiplier. For instance, my cost of living went up by about $5K/year to move to Manhattan (rent went up by a lot, which was partially offset by no longer having transportation costs). But my salary went up by over $100K. Yet a cost of living calculator says that Manhattan is significantly more expensive, and that an, e.g., $200K salary is only "worth" $114K in low-cost areas like Reno, which practically speaking, isn't true for me at all. I'm saving more money per year than what my post-tax salary in Reno would be in its entirety, which itself is an unlikely situation because the Big 4 don't have offices in Reno and I suspect there aren't a huge number of well-compensated developer jobs there, even at the $160K or so level that would yield the same savings left over as a $200K job in NYC.

You're always better off making a given salary in a higher CoL area than the equivalent salary in a lower CoL area, because not everything scales linearly with CoL (e.g. ordering goods off Amazon, or going on vacations), and your higher salary thus gets you more purchasing power on lots of goods and services.