"It shouldn't cost $20 for a burrito."

You never know what is going to spark a long-running discussion on social media, but this one on August 4 sparked heavy debate about affordability, mostly on X. Most of the people are talking past each other, focusing on different things. Both are important, and both should be addressed.

To the first claim: Of course getting a burrito is going to cost more when you order a more expensive option and then pay DoorDash or Grubhub to deliver it. If you want higher-end food and the convenience of having it delivered to your door so you do not need to leave your house, you're going to have to pay a premium for the cost of the delivery.

But we should not pretend that is a normal thing for everyone. I went to Taco Bell's website a couple days after the controversy broke, and the most expensive burrito I could find was $6.00 - less than one third of the the cost being debated on social media. You can also go to Wal-Mart and buy a package of eight frozen burritos for less than four dollars, or you can buy the basic ingredients (tortillas, meat, vegetables, salsa, beans, rice and whatever else) and make them yourself for significantly less than $20 per burrito.

Obviously, affordability is an issue, and no one is saying otherwise. There are a number of things that can be done to increase affordability: Lower tax rates a all levels and stop spending so much money at the federal level. Having freedom of the press at the U.S. Mint may buy votes, but it also has downstream effects on the economy. At the local level, we can make homes more affordable by doing things like decreasing the regulatory burden of land-use policy, and states can also limit the authority of local government's planning and zoning boards. We should not dismiss the affordability issue.

We also need some historical perspective. Food took up roughly 30% of household budgets in 1950, while it is less than half of that today. Consumer technology is dramatically less expensive than it was 30 years ago, and significantly more powerful. We are living in an incredible time, with luxuries (like air conditioning) our grandparents and great grandparents could not dream of having. I did not live somewhere with central air conditioning until I was 25 years old, and I am firmly in the middle of Generation X.

But if someone is spending $20 on a burrito and then whining about the cost of it, that is not a public policy problem. That is a personal choice problem. We can address the overall affordability issue while also pointing out that people can be more responsible with how they spend their money and recognizing that convenience often increases price. As with so much of life, it is not "all or nothing" and we need to throw the "all or nothing" mentality on the trash heap of history.

ConservaTibbs

And now for an old man rant about…