In Jayhawk Down, Nick Gillespie insightfully points out that the cost of living reflects both supply and demand — that is, “Economic freedom may be just another word for nothing else to do”:
Living in Huntsville and, less dramatically, in Oxford taught me that the price of a house didn’t simply reflect the cost of living but also the demand for living in a given area. If you can’t move a five bedroom house at $100,000, there ain’t a lot of living going on.