It depends on the application. I've worked at places where the main application being written needs 128GB to run. Another where it's computationally intense and will take hours for a single run on anything but the most massive machines. Another where the dataset is huge and simply being remote makes the bandwidth requirements untenable unless you live across from a data center. I've seen teams just accept their workflow will take 15 minutes each time they run their app because they're copying stuff from remote each time. Remote dev gives you as beefy a machine as you want, with the fastest network and lowest bandwidth.
But that's only the resource problem. Another problem I have seen my entire career, is devs can't keep their machines configured the same. They have different model laptops, they don't pin their app versions, they configure and install things by hand. Each time they change something by accident it takes them hours, days, sometimes weeks, to get it working again. That also can lead to bugs developing the app, which wastes a huge amount of time.
And then there's the fact that their local copy runs completely differently than it does in production. This leads to the app being written with certain assumptions about how it runs, that turn out to be false in production. I've seen this lead to catastrophe, as well as just weeks to months of wasted time, trying to track down issues. This is an undeniable, existential issue.
Finally, it's rare for local setups to be secure. Often devs get too much access from their local machines, and this is stolen by infostealer malware and compromise happens. A protected remote environment is easier to secure. A lot of development is hampered by all the crappy corporate security tools that's on laptops now. Remote dev allows you to bypass all that and have a fully working yet protected network without restrictions.
Is remote dev a pain? Right now, yeah, because nobody has made it be less painful. So of course it's easier on the local machine. But it's not ideal. I'm sure eating with a spoon was more painful than eating with your hands, until forks were popularized in the 18th century. Change took a long time, but I think most of us prefer the change once new tools became widely available.