Isn’t the cause the unnecessary requirement of onsite? This forces parent into the least of two bad options.
A cause not in your control is irrelevant. The industry is pretty clearly moving to RTO, and for cases where remote is possible, several workers in a third-world country for a fraction of your pay is clearly a better value prop.
The things you can control are 1) where you live, and 2) where you work. It's sounding more and more like the options are "live somewhere cheap and make pennies" or "live somewhere expensive and make decent salary".
People like OP stuck in the "remote or death" mindset aren't going to have much luck moving forward.
It seems common for people to struggle with something that's, to simplify, bad about the world, and to get many responses along the lines of "do x differently to deal with it." These responses may help the person or may not, and I'm completely in favor of responding pragmatically to your circumstances, but a fundamental function of the exchange should also be to change minds on the thing that's bad about the world so this happens less in the future. The individual complaints can be the trigger for that change, or can help it along, but instead usually get mired in responses which suggest individual solutions. I don't think that's smart for us in the long run.