THE TWENTY DOLLAR BURRITO 8-6-26

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parts Start your day with the morning jolt of Drake C. Toll. See, now it's on demand. My podcast is kind of a radio thing, I think, but also it's a bit of a TV show, and it's about whatever I want it to be. It's listening live as it happened, when it happened, with the instant reaction. You're home for talking sports. We go back, the Drake Toll Show, Westwood One Sports Network, and there will be on demand on your radio. Anywhere in the country, I'll see you there. Westwood One Sports Talk, your home for Drake C. Toll. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. All right, yes. Now is the time of the show where we get to talk about burritos. And how much they cost. And I'm sitting here starving. My stomach's trying to eat my backbone. I gave you. What an image. I gave you an whole hour, Max, to go get something to eat. Yeah, well, you know. Now I'm just going to make you more hungry. All right, welcome back to the live second hour of the show here on The Talk Monster. If you miss any of the show live, the podcast will be up on the website, wgow.com. I'd like to say that cheering in the background is for me, but no. I'm just going to be honest with you. Today is Scott Chase's birthday. He's been at this radio station for more than 40 years. 41 years. And this bunch of suckups at work in the back, they're all in there singing to him and got a cake for him. Oh, it's awful. I forgot to close the door. Yeah, no. Oh, man, I turned 40 this year. No one gave me a cake. I'm just. No, but, you know, and everybody loves Scott. Now, I'll go along with that. But I do think it's a bunch of sunk-ups. You know, they're in there just trying to make points. Well, the point I'm going to make for this half hour, apparently the cakes are too expensive. It's a crisis of how much cake costs. Well, at least, if not cakes, then burritos. And I want to explain, I want to, I want to explain, sorry, it's hard not to laugh when they're like all celebrating in the background. All right, so how did this debate start online? There is an online debate mostly among conservatives going on that started arguing about is there a crisis of affordability because of the cost of a burrito as an example that grocery prices and food prices are too high. So how did all this start? I'll start from the beginning here. So conservative commentator Matt Walsh, he posted this on X on August 3rd. He said grocery prices are insane. They're still rising. Addressing this problem should be the number one priority of every elected leader and the stupid foreign wars and focus on this issue. It's one of the main reasons socialists are gaining power. So that's what Matt Walsh said. Now.

Why he just says end the foreign wars and focus. One does not have to do with the other. But he also said grocery prices are insane. You know, it's insane. It's not just a problem. It's insane. So someone with TPUSA posted this in response. He said, one of our TPUSA college students gave me this take in affordability. A burrito shouldn't cost $20. He said, yeah, I. A lot of this is hangover from COVID and binary inflation, but the lived experience is the same. It just feels like basic things cost too much. So that got a lot of responses because, well, where in the world are you getting a burrito for $20? A burrito. It's got to be California where they pay the people who make them 35 bucks an hour. I guess. I don't know. So this started a whole thing on whether kids now expect too much. And they think instead of, you know, when I was in college or something, you wanted a burrito, you went to the store, got the ingredients, or you ate ramen noodles or something, that maybe kids are too entitled. So Mark Thiessen, who has been a Trump advisor in the past, he posted in response to that. He said, cry me a river, the burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan, is what someone said. So then vice president, yes, I kid you not. The vice president got in on this. Vice President JD Vance posted this. He said, I'm surprised to hear Mark say this. If you've ever met him in person, it's quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito. So JD Vance just called Mark Thes and fat. I guess this is the debate now. I kid you not. That is JD Vance's latest post on X, okay? So that's been going on. And then, let's see, we have a bunch of other people weighing in on this. Matt Walsh commented again, and he said the conservatives on here denying the affordability crisis are engaged in what I can only describe as an act of political suicide. They're also lying, which is the worst part. Grocery prices are up. Housing, energy, insurance, health care, basic living expenses. It's real. It's happening. Denying it just makes you look out of touch, deceitful, and untrustworthy. everything's up. And it's been been calling up for years. Yeah, yeah. He says it's also completely unnecessary and unforced error. No credible person is claiming that Trump caused the price surges. You don't have to disgrace yourself by denying the reality in front of your face. Just, Max, can you hear me a fair and close this door? I'm sorry. I can do better, Ned. I can go run them all out in the parking lot. Yeah, close this door, please. I meant to close it earlier. But said, uh, That's true. So let's discuss them debating whether the problem exists at all or if it does not exist, whether it counts as a problem is a total waste of time. It makes you look like a shill and a fraud. So Matt Walsh is saying that too many conservatives are denying what he calls the affordability crisis. It says the conservatives on here denying the quote unquote affordability crisis are engaged in what I can only describe as an act of political suicide. So that's what he said. Then I got, there's people like Benny Johnson out there who said if you're 20 years old, every basic good has gotten 100 times more expensive. Now, he actually meant 100 percent, not 100 times. That's two different things. So he got that wrong. But he would point out how things like chicken per pound used to, in 2006, cost $1.05, but in 2026, cost $2.5. So it's 100% more expensive in 20 years.

Now where the dishonesty comes in here is yes, obviously we have had inflation. Obviously it got worse after COVID and obviously prices seem high. But is the issue really with groceries? So it's amazing that people are commenting on this and nobody seems to do the research and it's very easy to do the research now because we all have AI. You can literally ask Rock to look up some of the stats and it's pretty easy to find. So I'll do that in a moment. But this is kind of my main point on all of this. You know, me personally, I make more money now than I ever have in my life, okay? It's not anywhere close to what most of the people saying on this issue on social media. I don't make anywhere close to what those people make. You know, I still have to really budget. But yes, I am making more money than I used to. But I admit. Things still feel tight. Obviously stuff feels expensive. Now, I think one of the issues with the debate we're having over the burrito and affordability is we have some like Matt Walsh calling it a crisis. To me, not every problem that needs to be solved is necessarily a crisis. It's a little bit of a squeeze, but I can't classify it as a crisis. Right, exactly. It is a squeeze for some people, but it's not a crisis. I also think making the debate about Iran is kind of silly. There is no proof that Iran is really affecting grocery prices as of right now. I mean, you look at the stats, grocery prices are actually outside of beef and eggs. They have not gone up that much in the last couple of years. Most of it came in 2022 right after COVID. Now, I have been pointing out, and I've been doing it on this show for months now, the areas of the economy, the areas that really hurt the wallets of people like me, you know, middle class, upper middle class, whatever. Where are people really feeling it? Are they really feeling it at the grocery store? Is that really the problem? And I'm pointing out that actually where people are really feeling it is housing or rent. The cost of housing or the cost of rent has gone up a lot. That's what really eats up the average budget in a house for a lot of people. Now, why is that? Because interest rates are high. When I look at my mortgage payment, most of it is going to the interest. Most of it is going to the interest on the bank. So that's why that's gone up. The other areas of the economy where things have gone up are health care, energy, child care, or school, whether it's college or if you want your kid in a private school or a preschool. People like me in the middle class or whatever, where we're really feeling the pinch is housing, health care. energy, but gas prices were down for a while. They've gone up a little bit. And child care, that's where things get squeezed. And you might say even a car payment, anything that's related to the interest rate and interest rates have gone up. So if you get a car payment, the car payment goes up. Those are the areas of the economy, but I also want to point out to everyone. These are also the areas of the economy that are most affected by government regulations and subsidies.

Housing and rent, heavily regulated, heavily subsidized by the federal government and heavily regulated on the state and local level. Healthcare, we could talk about that, how the government has screwed up that. Child care, heavily regulated, school tuition, heavily regulated and heavily subsidized by the government. There are free market solutions to these problems. The problem with Republicans right now is they're not pushing the free market solutions. So I just wanted to point that out. And oh, yeah, I forgot to mention I did some of the research. Because like I said, it's not hard to do. We have AI Internet now. We can do research. But grocery prices, since I looked it up, grocery prices have increased about 33% overall since 2019. So. The peak was in 2022, 11.4% that year is what grocery prices went up in 2022. That's a lot. In 2025, it went up about 2.2 to 2.3%. And in 2024, it went up about just 1.2%. Now, it's up a little bit so far in 2026, about 2.7 to 3.4%. The point is, those are not outrageous increases in the past few years of inflation. We're still feeling the effects of what happened right after COVID. But overall, since 2019 before COVID, grocery prices are up about 33%. Now, you look at wages, though. Wages are up, maybe about 30% adjusted for inflation since then. So the point is that, yes, grocery prices are a little more expensive, but people are making more money. So it's a little bit of a squeeze for some people, but it's not a quote, unquote, crisis for most people. How many people remember back in the 70s when our peanut farmer buddy was in? in power. Oh, yeah. And gas jumped from 22 cents a gallon to 70 cents a gallon, just boom overnight. Well, most of the people commenting on this, they're like my age or younger. And I bought a car that year. Oh, you did? At 12% interest. Yeah, that's crazy. You know, you talk about a squeeze. And I was working for the Red Bank Police Department at the time, and I was not making a killing. Right. You know, I... that's a big old jump. That's huge. And you ain't seen a jump like that one in the last 30 or 40 years. No, I mean, well, yeah, in terms of interest rates, no, we have not. In terms of inflation, there was, right after, there was a lot of inflation right after COVID. But the point is, really, we can have a discussion about prices being high. because we had inflation under COVID and we're still recovering from that and gas prices are a little high. Now, we do have an issue of beef prices, but that's kind of unrelated to inflation. There are other reasons for that. And egg prices was the same thing. But the point is, people going out there, when a kid goes out there and says things are too expensive because a burrito costs $20, he just seems out of touch and spoiled.

Because if you're complaining about a $20 burrito, where are you getting burritos? Yeah. Why did you expect to be able to afford, you know, a meal out so much cheaper to begin with? Or don't eat burritos. Yeah. What's really funny, too, is someone did the math. They said they could make, they added up buying the ingredients at Walmart to make eight burritos, not just one eight. And it costs about $18. Even with ground beef prices higher. And so. If we're going to have a talk about affordability in this country, I'm all for having that talk. But let's focus on the real issue. The real issue is the cost of housing and the cost of rent. That's where we feel the squeeze. I mean, especially people like me that had to buy a house. And child care. And child care. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. And the reason why child care affects us is, you know, my wife. it's basically cheaper for her to stay home than to work, yeah. Yeah, because of child care that's gotten so expensive. So if you want to weigh in on this, you can. 423-267-1023. 4-2-67-1023. One person said, did you say people are making more? My paycheck hasn't changed in three years. I can go over the stats on that. I mean, obviously, there are individual circumstances that are different. And I'm talking the last 20 years versus the last couple of years. But overall, yes, wages have on average increased as well, almost as much as inflation. So you can't just look at the inflation number. You also have to look at have wages grown in line with inflation. One's related to the other. Exactly. Always has been. Always will be right. All right. We'll be back. I've got to give an update on Iran a little bit later as well. We'll be back here on Yafi Life. The U.S. Soccer Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingeberg. And after interviewing so many dudes during this Men's World Cup, I'm so happy to be back with my U.S. women's national team players. I know the U.S. men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that World Cup, and we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in U.S. soccer. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. The U.S. Soccer podcast. Presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite. platform.