Strange, I feel like that it doesn’t matter anymore where you live because there are many more remote jobs than 10 or 20 years ago. And tech salaries give much more purchasing power outside SV.
I moved in 2020 and it has been the best decision I could have made. Taking into account everything (savings rate, safety, working hours, job security, politics, closeness to my home country in Europe) it is the best place I could be by far.
All other places trade off too much in exchange of something else. For example, I would have better savings rate in California (maybe 60-100k instead of 30-50k a year), but it would be worse in every other metric, except perhaps weather, although I dislike hot weather.