Perhaps because you don't need to:

- pay $250K per child in college costs

- pay 25K/year in health insurance

- pay $3K/month for a small apartment

This is the sentiment I usually see but how are one's expenses or expected living standard is relevant regarding compensation for work? Imo it is very hard to argue against equal work => equal pay. At least from a moral pov.

Btw that is a lot of incorrect assumptions about expenses, including where someone's children might want to go to college, globally fixed costs like work equipment and cloud services, not to mention goods which are actually cheaper in the US.

Because the market wills so. (Actually, you're at the mercy of your employer.)

Also high competition for perceivably cheap candidates.

For one, I don't think just because you can exploit entire groups of people you are right to do that. The market could command lower wages for <underprivileged group> and it would not be right. It just happens overseas employees are protected by no one.

What I find more interesting though, is that remote first companies behave the same. way E.g. look at GitLab salary calculator[0]. How does that make sense assuming a rational market?

[0] https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/