People have always moved for economic opportunity. It was hard for them, but they did it so they and their offspring could have a better future. You can stay in a place with a sh**tty economy and bitch about it, or you can run your own life and better yourself.
That's part of the problem though. Labor mobility has dramatically reduced for lower skilled workers compared to what it was in the late 19th and much of the 20th century. There are far more obstacles in place now for both entry into and exit from labor markets which are exacerbating the geographic wealth disparities.
But the glowing successes are also expensive places to live. If you could earn Atlanta pay and live with costs of southern Georgia, then you would do very well. But that is like saying that 2017 wages with a 1957 cost of living would be very good, too.
What people earn in New York, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, or Houston that they don't get in cheap-rent places goes into rent. The New Economy is heavily rent collection. The real America isn't the great pay in Silicon Valley -- it is the rent that software engineers pay in Silicon Valley. In a way, Donald Trump as a rapacious rent-collector is more of the American economy than is the high-flying innovation in electronics or cultural creation.
Places stranded in the early-industry stage of economic development, like Detroit, Flint, Milwaukee, Gary, or St. Louis are doing badly. Places still rural are getting the worst of a plantation level of inequality and working conditions characteristic of early industry.
For most of the economy life is a lose-lose proposition as the American economy takes on characteristics of a Marxist stereotype of capitalist exploitation and a reality of a Marxist-style nomenklatura among bureaucratic elites, with big land-owners acting much like lords of the manor.
About all that most of us have is the duty to suffer for elites in return for vague promises of delights in the Afterworld for those who can suffer with a smile.
Which is one of the main reasons why barriers have become so high. The hottest job markets no longer allow sufficient housing stock to meet demand for living there. This is why costs have become so astronomical.
And it's not just a problem of landowners pushing land-use restrictions, renters love rent control despite the fact that is exacerbates the problems its proponents thinks it solves.
