Photograph Source: Swift Benjamin – CC BY 2.0
Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet got people talking with an early August tweet in which he relates a student activist’s take on the “affordability” issue. “A burrito,” the student told him, “shouldn’t cost $20.”
On the putative political “right,” responses range between two endpoints.
At one end, various “burrito index” projects demonstrate that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find a $20 burrito in America unless it’s delivered or from a restaurant with a big-name chef that charges $200 a plate for things cooked with weird “reductions” and served covered in even weirder “aolis,” if you can even get a reservation without first showing your Oscar trophy or mega-millions net worth to establish cred.
At the other end, soon-to-be-former Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw’s “stop whining, get a job, eat Ramen like the rest of us did in college, on a budget with 4 roommates” tweet.
Before going further down the $20 burrito rabbit hole, I think it’s important to let Kolvet rescue himself from the notion that he’s a $20 burrito complaint radical himself. He ratchets the situation down to the more obvious real problem:
“Yeah, a lot of this is a hangover from Covid and Biden-era inflation,” he writes, because of course a Republican will always shift as much blame as possible to a Democrat, “but the lived experience is the same: It just feels like basic things cost too much.”
Fact check: Yes, that’s true.
I did a little “burrito index” type checking in my own neck of the woods, and the most expensive burrito I could find cost $16.95.
The “El Dueno,” on offer at my favorite local Tex-Mex place, Los Avina in Archer, Florida, is “stuffed with steak strips, topped with white cheese dip, sautéed onions, bell peppers, grilled chicken and shrimp,” and is served with a side of rice (all diners get “bottomless” chips and salsa there, too). With a drink, call it $20 plus tip for a full meal, of which the incredibly robust burrito is only part.
So yeah, the “$20 burrito” complaint is wildly overblown.
But back to “the lived experience.” Yes, things cost more than they used to. That’s always the case, but it’s been MORE the case over the last few years. While there are various reasons for that, the biggest one is taxes, and the most pernicious, if not always the largest annual, tax is inflation.
People tend to think of inflation as just another word for “price increases,” and mainstream media use of the word encourages that.
But, as the late economist Milton Friedman explained, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”
To unpack that a little: Inflation occurs when there’s more “money” chasing after the same amount of goods, and that’s caused when “money” is created by a central authority (the Federal Reserve) which can just magically create more any time its partner (the US government) wants to borrow a bunch.
In theory, the Fed tries to keep inflation at an annual rate of about 2%. In 2026, it’s running at about 3.5%, after hitting a high of 8% in 2022.
When a restaurant’s costs — ingredients, rent, electricity, labor, etc. — go up by 2% or 8%, its prices are going to go up as well. The restaurateur isn’t going to lose money for the privilege of serving you the El Dueno, and who can blame him?
If inflation is at “only” 2%, you’re paying $1 in taxes for every $50 you spend from savings, above and beyond income taxes, sales taxes, etc. Inflation is as real as those other taxes, just not as immediately obvious.
The Burrito Liberation Front’s mission is to stop the Fed from creating, and the government from borrowing, so much money.
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