Cost of living, salaries vary by region

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To the editor:

(In regard to a recent Morton Marcus column), I think high income has to do with living in or near big cities that have a high cost of living and, therefore, pay accordingly.

The whole state of California would fall in this area. Let’s look at the six other states Marcus mentioned: New York, cost of living high, wages high; Texas, full of oil companies that make a lot of money and apparently pay a lot of money; New Jersey, people live here, but they work in New York where the wages are high; Florida, a lot of the population is rich people who have retired to sunny Florida; Illinois, Chicago has a high cost of living and high wages to compensate; Virginia, people there work in Washington, D.C., where the wages are astronomical.

Then there’s Indiana — only a few companies in Indiana pay high wages, so they can recruit from out-of-state universities. The rest use local talent. But our cost of living is low.

(The governor and his discrimination bill may run a lot of businesses out of the state, so we could be going down the tubes. But that’s a different story.)

I love your columns. Keep up the good work.

Diane Brow

Greenfield