It is an extreme example of a place where labour mobility is so valuable it happens in spite of restraints. In fact it is so extreme that it is hard to draw lessons for modern western countries (although it has obvious resemblances to urbanisation in Europe a few centuries ago).
Many American state universities discriminate against students based on where their parents live (e.g. charging in-state vs out-of-state tuition).
B. Yes, but you easily get residence by living there for less than a year. Also,public K12 schools can’t discriminate like they do in china.
i.e. I'm comparing the lower labour cost of the west in general vs the west before the 70s. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
If you want to deep dive into a present county per county labour cost specifically, then I'd argue yes as well http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/teacher-pay/
Anaheim teachers make ~50% more than SF teachers and spend 4 times less proportion of their income on rent.
Instead of increasing commute times, more typically it involves simply not taking jobs that are further away.
Restricting labor mobility is really bad for obvious reasons: people not being able to move where the jobs are means jobs not being filled even as unemployment increases. There is overwhelming evidence that labor mobility has gotten drastically worse in recent decades, and local NIMBYism is one of the major causes: http://neighborhoodeffects.mercatus.org/2017/01/26/why-the-l...
Compare this to China, which has had tens of millions of people flock to brand new megacities for the new job opportunities there.