Perhaps remote work will reduce this disparity. I'd expect it to happen in "waves" as high-paid remote workers move from cities with "tier N" CoL+culture to "tier N+1."
I'd just add that, while it's hard to drive out of expensive real estate in the Bay Area, that's actually not true of a lot of major cities. While there are expensive towns, there are also some pretty reasonable towns within 60-90 minutes of Boston for example. Not living downtown can buy you a lot of weekends on the town in a hotel.
There's already been a significant migration from NY+CA to FL+TX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...