If "Equal pay for equal work" is applied on a long term, That may have a great effect on demography and how cities/countries operate. I can imagine some people living in high COL areas will prefer relocating to other still-nice-locations with lower COL and also the other way around for people already living in lower COL areas. That should relieve higher COL areas from the huge pressure and give more juice to lower COL areas that enables it to improve its infrastructure and services making it even more attractive. Eventually, this high contrast between high COL and low COL areas would start to normalize even for non-remote non-high-paying jobs!