Does a $20 Burrito Come with Chips and a Drink?

What’s with this $20 burrito nonsense? A college student complains about the cost of a burrito and republicans are rushing to see who can be the biggest fool about it.  The simple response would have been, “Yeah, eating out can be expensive these days.” Instead, we’re getting a rerun of Trump’s own “let them eat cake” moment, when he brushed off rising prices at Walmart caused by his illegal border taxess. Remember: “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” He also “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”

Note to republicans: don’t have a guy who made $2 billion bucks by just sitting on his butt comment on how much things cost.

I go to a local seafood restaurant once a month with a friend. My fish sandwich runs $16, his grilled yellowfin $18. We both skip the $145 lobster “special.” Sure, we could drive down the street to a fast-food fish joint for less or just stay home. But we choose not to.

That’s the key word: choice. Nobody is forcing you to by that $20 burrito but if you do it comes with an opportunity cost — you’re choosing not to buy a cheaper one and buying more stuff with the change. My Walmart sells an eight-pack of burritos for $5.47. “But there’s a difference between a $20 burrito and a Walmart one,” you might say. I’d certainly hope so — the same way there’s a difference between that restaurant fish sandwich and the fast-food version. So instead of telling college kids to “suck it up and eat ramen,” as Rep. Dan Crenshaw did, maybe just tell them to choose wisely.

Economics is the study of making choices under limited resources. This is the perfect economic lesson.  But it’s not just the college kids who are whining. The republicans are whining too, having forgotten Econ 101.  “The market doesn’t care what you think something ‘should’ cost,” Crenshaw said. “Only communists care — they set prices, remember? And then everyone starves, remember? Are you a communist? Or are you an American adult male capable of handling his own business?” Crenshaw seems to have forgotten that his own president is fond of setting prices himself. Though to be fair, Trump isn’t a communist — more of a socialist-lite, or maybe a neo-socialist.

But Crenshaw has missed the boat. Ben Shapiro missed the boat too, arguing that young Americans shouldn’t be buying pricey burritos in the first place. “If you’re paying $20 for a burrito and you’re not independently wealthy, you’re doing life wrong. We have enough problems as a country without insane expectations that the government is going to provide us gourmet-quality burritos.”

What garbage. The beauty of choice is that a young person can splurge on a $20 burrito if he wants, understanding he’s giving something else up to do it. Why not treat yourself once in a while? Even a Harvard sophomore eats in the cafeteria every now and then. Shapiro shouldn’t be worried about the government handing out “gourmet-quality burritos” — in an actual socialist country, people would be thrilled just to get the eight-pack from Walmart.

There’s some irony in the fact that Trump beat Biden partly by campaigning on affordability. Now he is being bitten in the place where he sits by the same issue. He can blame Biden all he wants for the ongoing cost-of-living problems, but at this point it’s his to own. His policies have made things worse, and he’s done nothing to fix it. Biden is irrelevant now. Trump is either unable or unwilling to undo the damage he’s caused. Republicans mocking college kids for complaining just makes themselves look like idiots.

As a professor, I see a teaching moment here. It reminds me of Les McCann’s classic “Compared to What?” All this whining makes it sound like food costs are the front line of the affordability crisis. They aren’t. The numbers say otherwise. We are not living through some unprecedented food emergency. As David Harsanyi points out, drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistics data:

In 1901, the average American family spent 42% of its disposable budget on food.

By 1945 that figure was 23%. By 1965, 15%. By 1985, around 12%.

Today it’s 9.7%, and that number is inflated by historically high rates of dining out and food delivery.

https://nypost.com/2026/08/05/opinion/check-the-data-doom-and-gloomers-food-costs-arent-what-you-think

Now put that in your burrito!