Cost of living calculators are calibrated for the median budget, which looks very different from the budget of someone who makes 400k/year. Poor people spend a large fraction of their money on housing, which is much more expensive in HCOL areas and skews the cost of living multiplier. If you were only paying 5% of your income on rent in a LCOL area and your rent quadruples after moving to SF, you only need a 15% pay increase to cover that, not a 300% increase.

Also don’t forget that wealthy people can save most of their money, so an X% increase in overall expenses doesn’t need to translate to an X% increase in income.