This article tries to provide a near black and white answer to a VERY gray situation. I come at this from someone who did get a US expat contract and relocate to another country (Austria). A couple years later I started my own firm in Austria and then started hiring. We do work all over the world for 25+ years. Since covid we also have "home office / remote work"...sometimes.

What kind of employees you can have and what you pay them VERY much depends on the kind of work your firm does, the type of customers you have, and the type of customer relations you have. It is completely stupid to compare a back office developer with a technical support rep with a mission critical systems engineer - all of which may require the same technical expertise/background but after that the differences begin.

The not so veiled threat that jobs will be moved to the lowest common denominator countries has been going on for decades already.