My contribution to the heated (or is it flat-grilled?) burrito discourse: During my first prenatal course, I excelled in one module: the swaddle. While other soon-to-be-dads fumbled over wrapping their infant manikins, my stand-in kiddo was snug so tight Siberian winds couldn’t penetrate its silicone skin. For the first and only time, my loving wife was proud she hadn’t picked any crumbum off the rack to start a family with.
My secret to the press’n’fold? Years of sweating over a scalding speedline, preparing burritos for theme parkers desperate to placate their crying, starved children in triple-degree July weather. Trust me: when a bald, middle-aged, sun-reddened man is desperately handing $50 over for seven pollo burritos to keep his brood from erupting into cacophony, you learn to angularly crease tortillas faster than bedsheets in basic. The pressure only mounts when a wide-eyed single-mother holds the whip hand, looking for any error in which to demand her meal gratis with full admission refunds for her trouble.
So there you have it. Twitter slings sailing over burritos, which, I assume, is based on the difficulty of squeezing in any double-meat order without a rip, tear, incise, uncrimp, or perforation. That should wrap this column up, heh heh.
…
What’s that? The burritocourse isn’t about the intricacies of tucking cilantro? It’s about the price tag? Well, I’ll be jiggered. How much does a bag of frozen El Monterey gut bombs cost these days? Five skins? Maybe eight in a big, blue, tax-happy city? So what’s the, erm, beef?
Apparently, somewhere in these abundant United States, a reckless youth is shelling out an Andy Jackson for what amounts to a cup of steer bundled in flour. Who could be so short-sighted, so splashing, so foolish as to spend, not in ducks and drakes, but in barbacoa and carnitas?
This wayward consumer in question was the echt waster: a college student. Worse, a conservative college student, whose daily fitting to class consists of dun khakis, a Brooks Brothers jacket, and a *shudder* “Calvin Coolidge 4 Prez” regency striped tie. His father bought a free ride to Legacy University; Mommy’s allowance goes to deliverista’ed fast-casual; he plies his fraternity friends with Coors Banquet, though they’ll never let him pledge. Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet relayed the sad song on Twitter: “One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability…”
Cool it there, Kolvet. The premise is all askance. Asking a college student’s thoughts on frugality is akin to asking an alcoholic what time the library closes. The lush hasn’t a clue when anything besides a watering hole shutters. Mollycoddled teens with six-figure-debt millstones around their necks aren’t the model demo to consult about orderly financials.
The collegian in question proves as much: “A burrito shouldn’t cost $20” he declares. And a four-bedroom house in Wichita shouldn’t cost $5 million; a new Ford Escape shouldn’t cost $500,000; an iPhone 17 shouldn’t cost $10,000; a PlayStation 5 shouldn’t cost $2,000; and on and on and on and on and…
Nerd qualification out of the way: in a fiat economy, prices are relative to the money supply versus the amount of available goods. So maybe, some indeterminate years in the future, and a ten-fold increase in dollars circulating, burritos may make the Old Hickory hurdle. But not in 2026, unless you’re DoorDashing Chipotle with quadruple steak and guacamole at 1 A.M. in Brooklyn.
Either this unstinting scholar stumbled upon the most expensive pillow of protein and cheese in America, or he is exaggerating hardship. (He’s in college, so almost assuredly the latter.) But the typical conservative response to the dearly marked Tex-Mex is unwarranted contempt. “Cry me a river,” was one representative rejoinder. Admittedly, I’m eager to join the wave off. Dumping on whiny communications majors at varying Directional Universities is an honored tradition.
But the kid’s got a point. Not a “from the mouth of babes!” point, but an acute asseveration. Prices, particularly foodstuffs, are high, relative to a half-decade ago.
Of course, people have complained about the cost of living since Sumerians groused over paying 5 silver ingots for an auroch. The urge to throttle an unskilled cashier for unexpectedly wallet-thumbing tab is sub specie aeternitatis. But after a summer of paying $4-a-gal. for gas, it’s not unreasonable to conclude, in the words of America’s most populist pol of this century, that the price of everything is too damn high.
The cause of the cost-surge is multifarious: years of unremitting money printing; the ongoing war with Iran; a tariff scheme that resembles a two-year-old fingerpainting more than prudent industrial policy; a stifling bureaucracy plagued by regulatory capture; Egg Council creeps fixing carton charges.
A feisty bunch of fancy-degreed blue-collar-LARPers is winning elections under the “democratic socialist” banner thanks to the stubborn unaffordability of everything. That some acne-addled apple-polisher can even think up a $20 burrito as illustrative of generalized sticker shocker proves two things.
One: if Americans want lower prices, they must accept higher interest rates. Not happening, in other words. And two: this columnist needs a raise. Hey, editor! Time for a talk about my pittance of a commission…
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