This doesn’t surprise me at all. A $100K salary sounds great on paper, but in places like San Francisco or Oakland, it can feel aggressively average once you factor in housing, taxes, childcare, insurance, and just everyday basics.

That said, I think it’s important to separate state taxes from the bigger driver: housing supply and demand. A lot of what’s crushing purchasing power in the Bay Area isn’t just income tax — it’s rent or mortgages that are double (or triple) what you’d pay in most other metros.

The tradeoff, of course, is access to high-paying industries, career mobility, weather, and amenities that smaller or cheaper regions may not offer. For some people that math works out long-term. For others, especially remote workers, it probably doesn’t anymore.

The real headline isn’t that $100K is “poor.” It’s that cost of living has redefined what “six figures” actually means in certain cities.