The price of real estate in an area is set pretty exactly to the level of productivity (i.e. what kinds of jobs you can hold) in that area.

So yeah, it all “works out” in that it doesn’t matter if the median person is producing $10 or $15 or $2000 worth of value per hour. The median person will always be “barely making it” given what they must spend to have access to jobs in which they can produce that much value. Look at Palo Alto’s consideration of housing welfare for people earning $150k - $250k/yr.

Inequality grows as more people max out their individual productive potential, but real estate prices keep rising because the few hyper-productive peoples’ ceilings have not been hit yet.