Suppose there are two employees: Alice and Bob, who do the same job at the same factory. Alice has a 10 minute (20RT) commute, Bob commutes 35 minutes(70RT).
If you’re the owner of the factory, would you compensate them for their commutes? How would you do it?
Why would an employer care how far away their employees live, or compensate them for their travel?
Unless the employer also gets to decide where they can and can’t live, why should they compensate them?
Commute obviously has an impact on overall satisfaction. In roles that can be done remote or in person you can effectively trade commute time for pay.
This logic can be extended to employees working in person with contrasting commute times. Thus op’s question
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Most of an employees job has perverse incentives
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I don’t think anyone is successfully taking advantage of longer commute time for more pay.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, commute time is already factored in to employees compensation. This happens in a few ways but one of the ways it doesn’t happen is employees choosing to more farther away to make more money.