Again, it's simply the fact that those places are more expensive to live in. Comparing to Brooklyn? It's a packed ass city - this leads to less supply of land and areas for homes/apartments. That drives up prices from the massive amount of people. In comparison - Louisiana has shitloads of land and can spread out far and wide. It's also hot as balls with shit weather in general, subject to hurricanes, and likely has far less high paying jobs.
Yes but why does that matter for the federal tax code? Remember your point is that the tax code should be location agnostic. The way it functions now someone living in Brooklyn pays higher federal taxes than someone living in Louisiana who has an equivalent lifestyle.
Again, it's high cost of living - but it's high cost of living because of the basics of capitalism. It's a more desired location. I don't understand how that means you should get a tax advantage - you're free as anyone else to move to those low cost of living areas that you claim are advantageous.
I agree with you that we shouldn't subsidize high cost of living areas!
I also think we shouldn't subsidize low cost of living areas as we currently do. Since you said the federal tax code shouldn't prefer one over the other I assume that means you agree?
If you don't agree can you explain why you think it's wrong for the feds to subsidize high cost areas but right for them to subsidize low cost areas?
Also - further argument: Since it is indeed HCOL there - that means (as you said) the federal government must pay their workers in those HCOL areas substantially more than federal employees in other areas. Hence, people in that area should pay those higher taxes - which in turn pays for those higher COL federal employees that are derived from said higher taxes.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. If we are now saying that areas should pay for their own federal outlays several problems stem from that:
1) it's kind of getting rid of the purpose of having a fiscal union.
2) high cost of living areas currently pay considerably more in federal taxes than they give back so they are already doing as you suggest and more.
3) if you think areas should pay for their federal outlays well... low COL areas tend to take a lot more in federal dollars than they pay back and that difference basically comes from high COL areas. So once again we are going to need to either increase taxes on low COL areas or lower them on high COL ones if we're going to have that principle.