That is a good point that many people ignore. Living costs are much more in wealthier areas, however consumer goods generally stay the same price regardless of area and don't scale with relative pay of the area. So unless your housing expenses scales faster than the pay increase scales from working in those wealthier areas, you have far more luxury and consumer spending available to you by living in that wealthier area. Not to mention the many other benefits of living in a more "expensive" area like having greater availability, competition, and choices for consumer services, or economic opportunities and luxury services.

Obviously this would still have to be evaluated on a place-to-place and person-to-person basis, but I think more often than not living in a wealthier area increases your quality of living; but we also can't expect our entire nation of people to move around like a bunch of migrant workers all the time. I think we should worry about how this ends up economically punishing people who didn't predict the next 25+ years of economic changes when they try to find somewhere to settle down and build a business or buy a home and have a family.