And they continued to pay their US based employees more (including employees relocating from cheaper locales) because CEOs believed (whether rightly or wrongly is irrelevant) that there was a significant advantage to having them physically collocated with their teams in the US.

Essentially, US workers have spent the last 2 years screaming at CEOs that no, they’re idiots, there is absolutely no benefit to physically collocating employees in the US and they should not have paid them anymore.

Turkeys voting for Christmas.