Fundamentally, there's an incompatibility between living in a country that normally has complete freedom of movement between states and a system that also essentially requires you to be a resident of a specific state for reason of things like driver's licenses and state income taxes (although if you split your time in multiple locations you may actually be required to file in multiple locations anyway). It can be done legally but, as I commented up-thread, a number of states are starting to look harder at people who spend a lot of time in their state but are paying all their income taxes elsewhere. You can't just say you live in Nevada because you have a PO Box there.

> overhaul the system itself

I agree with this, but it will take decades, and I'll leave it to politics experts to deal with that. There are things I want to get done in my life, and I will get them done without needing to involve myself in that mess. If it needs me to move into another country or jurisdiction to get those things done, I'm open to that.

I respect those that want to go fight that battle, but everyone needs to pick their own battles to fight, and I have enough battles I'm fighting already.

> adding hacky patches to get around it isn't the way to go

I disagree. You should fix the architecture but you should also feel free to use hacky patches until the fix is done.

Meanwhile it isn't the taxation structure I'm arguing against, it's the salary discrimination by location.

If a company values my work at $X/year they should give me $X/year independent of all other considerations, and also give someone else who accomplishes the same exact work $X/year independent of other considerations.

Many companies don't make "significant" (yes, word doing a lot of work) cost of living adjustments within the US. But most of them probably have salary bands that are materially lower than top of SV scale. Flat wages for remote across the country isn't a general problem but it is if you want to get paid what Google will pay locally.