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Why America Is Fighting Over a $20 Burrito
Last week one of the most important controversies in the history of conservative discourse raged across the internet, with sides deeply divided and solutions rare or nonexistent.
This dispute reflects the deepest underlying foundations of our economic future.
I am speaking, of course, about The Great Burrito Debate of 2026.
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating about the significance, but I do think this conflict taps into the core of people's concerns about America's inflation problem. Not only that, but it exposes a lot of misconceptions people have about what inflation is, what's causing it and who’s to blame.
It’s really about the cost-of-living crisis
The burrito debate started, in my opinion, as an honest discussion about the cost-of-living crisis and somehow ended up as a coordinated attack on the Trump Administration's handling of U.S. economic policy.
Many conservative and libertarian commentators jumped into the fray with their two cents, though, the vast majority of them have no economic background, which I think added more confusion than clarity to the issue.
After 20 years of studying and writing about macroeconomics (and predicting the stagflation crisis far in advance of the Ivy League “experts”) I thought I might offer a different perspective.
Keep in mind that those of us in the alternative economic field had to fight against the lies of the Biden Administration as well as establishment economists like Paul Krugman and Federal Reserve officials like Janet Yellen just to wake the public up to the fact that inflation was upon us and that it was not “transitory.”
Ultimately, everyone's bank balances and monthly bills could not be denied and the gaslighting ended. The only recourse of the establishment at that point was to blame Trump for all of it.
In fact, I suspect that was the plan all along. I predicted this outcome well before Trump was elected. (The “Herbert Hoover” comparisons were rampant.)
To be clear, Trump has reduced the size of government by around 12%, which is an incredible accomplishment considering the amount of legal resistance that was put in place to stop him. However, he did not reduce government spending, which is around 3% higher than under Biden.
The problem of federal spending
One problem is that 60% of all federal spending is mandatory. By law, programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. all scale their spending to match inflation. There is very little that Trump can do about that, at least without Congressional support.
Then there's the rising interest on debt payments, which is influenced by the Federal Reserve, not the President.
Trump's spending cuts were only focused on discretionary spending, on institutions like USAID. Legally, there’s not much he can do to rein in the 60% mandatory spending, or the refinancing expense.
This is where I think the public has a disconnect from the reality of the situation, and this includes fiscal conservatives who think they are “holding Trump's feet to the fire” over U.S. debt. The president is not all powerful and he has very little control over the direction of the U.S. economy. If he made all the cuts these fiscal conservatives demand, he would have to be a dictator.
In other words, they can't have it both ways. Either Trump takes a constitutional hands-off approach to the economy and government spending, or, he goes full-on Francisco Franco, declares himself supreme leader, and starts chopping out large pieces of government (the Spanish “Stabilization Plan” of 1959).
That's the only way these kinds of policies are going to happen because Congress isn't going to do anything.
Congress’s #1 job: Win re-election
The problem is our modern government is designed to perpetuate itself; it is designed to grow forever. This is accomplished through the bureaucracy, which is the real power base within American politics. As I have been saying ever since Trump returned to office, most people do not understand that politicians come and go, but the bureaucracy is forever. There are no term limits for career civil servants.
The people within these structures control the direction of the country and the economy (this includes the central bank). When they face any real political opposition, they have the option to simply stall, obstruct and wait for that political party or leader to leave office.
Trump, for example, has only four years to redirect a system that has been on the wrong path for decades. It's not going to happen, unless he pulls a Franco, which would cause everyone to lose their minds.
This brings us back to the “Burrito Debate” and the issue of inflation vs. public expectations. The debate started with a post from a TPUSA spokesman sharing a college student's complaint about the cost of basic necessities, including the $20 dollar price tag on his take-out burrito:
This triggered a wider discussion about affordability vs perception, then spiraled into an argument over conservatives not having enough empathy for struggling young people.
The mainstream media eventually picked up the story:
Critics warned that conservative dismissals of the ongoing cost of living crisis will lead to younger generations rushing to support socialism, and MAGA would be to blame. (Yeah, the whole thing went a bit out of control.)
So, there are two elements to this conflict that I think need to be addressed and I'll try to summarize as best I can.
First, there's the issue of younger generations simply not having a point of reference for how bad the cost of living crisis today is compared to previous generations.
Second, there's the lack of understanding among older generations of conservatives on where the current crisis is likely headed in the future. That is, without drastic measures taken to prevent it.
Of course, a burrito doesn’t actually cost $20. This is a terrible point of reference, simply not based on reality. Maybe it's the most expensive, truffle-and-gold-leaf burrito in the most expensive restaurant in a high-cost city like San Francisco or New York? But for most of the country, even a delicious burrito is going to cost, at most, $12.
This brings me to the first issue, which is the younger generation's point of reference and lack of historical perspective. To be clear, the inflationary problems in the U.S. in the 2020's are not the worst inflationary crisis the country has seen. Not yet, anyway.
From 1972-1981 (just after the U.S. dollar was fully detached from the gold standard), the U.S. suffered one of the most brutal series of inflationary beatings in the nation's history. Inflation rates hit as high as 13% per year, food prices rose by around 120%, rent prices jumped by 75% and home prices rose by 150%.
This decade nearly crushed the American economy. The poverty rate hit 14% and the unemployment rate peaked at 9%. Wages remained stagnant or even dropped for some workers. The average yearly income by 1981 was only $22,000 for a household and $12,000 for individual workers ($84,400 and $46,000 respectively, adjusted for inflation). Most younger people complain about how older people “had it easy” with food prices and house prices back in the day. They don't seem to understand how low wages were in comparison.
The point is, yes, Gen Z is struggling. Their problems should not be dismissed as frivolous. That said, I think because of internet culture and false expectations, many young people assume they are going through the worst crisis of all time (and no one understands how bad things are for them).
In reality, generations before them had it much worse. The crisis of the 1970s did not end until the Federal Reserve exploded interest rates to 20%, causing a deflationary reset and making credit all but unattainable for most people.
If you are in your 20s and you think you're not supposed to be struggling, I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. We all had to struggle, many of us with terrible wages and low job availability compared to today. Don't expect to be living comfortably until your mid-30s.
It's just the way things have always been and every generation has experienced eras of economic uncertainty. And when you go on Instagram and see people your age partying on yachts and racing Ferraris, you have to understand they either inherited that wealth or they rented the gear to make an impressive video.
But this doesn't mean that there's not considerable danger looming in the near future.
The real economic risks we face
What some conservatives get wrong is the notion that the system can be fixed politically if we only keep Democrats out of office. This is not the case. Once an avalanche is set in motion it can't be stopped, and decades of snowfall have been building today’s avalanche. A single dry season doesn’t help – it just doesn’t hurt even more.
Listen: Inflation cannot be reversed without a deflationary event. Since the credit crash of 2008-2009, political leaders and the Federal Reserve have been aggressively trying to prevent any deflation (Keynesian economics). As Time Magazine reported at the time, “We are all Keynesians now.”
Instead of tolerating a true business cycle recession, which would’ve cleared out the economic deadwood (overleveraged companies, speculative enterprises with no hope of profit etc.) the central banks of the world bent over backwards to prevent the inevitable creative destruction that follows a speculative boom.
America (and most of the world) have not taken the deflationary medicine we should have taken years ago. Instead, we printed, we borrowed and spent and bailed out the failures – delaying the inevitable reckoning for one more election cycle. Our leaders kicked the can down the road for someone else to pick up later.
Some “experts” believe we can kick the can down the road for eternity. This is pure foolishness.
The Catch-22 (which I have been writing about for some time) is that the central bankers think they must continue to intervene to disrupt the business cycle, save failing businesses and prevent deflation. But each time they do they pump up the money supply and create even more inflation.
The pandemic event was the most recent instance of this. The covid bailouts caused an immense inflationary reaction and the spike in prices that followed is mostly what Gen Z is feeling today as they attempt to enter the work-a-day world and consider buying homes and starting families.
If the Fed lowers rates and prints money, more inflation is on the way. If they hike interest rates and refuse to intervene, the U.S. faces a deflationary crisis. This is where we're at today and yes, Gen Z and Gen Alpha will be hit the hardest unless something is done. But what?
A way out of the economic paradox
The only political or policy solution that makes sense is an organized deflation plan, if such a thing is possible.
Meaning, the Fed (or a new government agency replacing the Fed) hikes rates far higher than they currently are, then steps back and refuses to bail out failing companies whose lifeline is unlimited access to cheap credit.
Meanwhile, the federal government would have to somehow slash spending to the bone. Balance the budget while also acting to mitigate greater damage to families by reducing taxes wherever possible (perhaps even ending property taxes on single family homes?)
This would require a level of institutional coordination and cooperation that does not exist today.
Trump, or someone else, would have to go full generalissimo and dictate every tiny detail of the operation, across agencies and federal departments. The same liberals (and some conservatives) who complain about the state of the U.S. economy would do everything in their power to prevent that kind of unilateral authority (especially in the hands of a populist leader).
The economy could return to a more “normal” set of conditions. But only after the economic bubble has been strategically burst. I suspect similar actions would have to take place every 30 years or so to prevent another build-up of inflationary pressures.
It would be a kind of “economic reset,” not in form that the globalists at the WEF prefer! A planned and deliberately engineered reset – which I believe is better than simply waiting around for the bankers or random chance to decide when an economic crash occurs.
In other words, each generation would have to accept the responsibility of dealing with a controlled deflationary downturn for at least a few years. At least planning it would make it possible for the population to prepare in advance.
The only other option, as noted, is to do nothing and wait for the bubble to burst without warning. This is likely what's going to happen. This is what has happened regularly since Paul Volcker broke the back of the stagflation cycle in the early 1980s. Not a single Federal Reserve chair since Volcker has had the courage or the foresight to do what he did. To return to our avalanche metaphor, Volcker saw the snow building up – saw how dangerous it was – so he went in with dynamite and blew it up. The consequences were real and they were dire. But they weren’t as deadly as an uncontrolled, unpredictable, full-strength avalanche sweeping down on a complacent nation.
So, what does the endgame look like? Eventually, high prices will drag down spending enough that deflation sets in. (We may have already seen the beginnings of this in the July retail sales figures.) Job losses will rise, then jump. The yen carry-trade will derail. A black swan event will pull the rug out from under us – something will happen that sets the inevitable chain of events in motion. And central banks will do what they always do, which is print money. They’ll tell us that, by doing so, despite the surge of inflation, they prevented a much bigger problem. Even though that’s impossible to prove the negative, they’ll expect us to believe them and be grateful.
Eventually, the dollar won't be able to take it anymore and the currency itself will break. Then, your burritos really will cost $20 or more each. Why? For the same reason a Taco Bell Japan burrito costs ¥570-¥900, or a gourmet burrito will run you ¥1,800-¥2,500. Because money-printing will have utterly devalued the currency! That will be a terrible day of reckoning.
Whatever policymakers ultimately choose, individual Americans don’t have to bet all their savings on getting that choice right. That’s one reason many Americans choose physical gold and silver – assets with a long history of holding value through periods of inflation, currency weakness and even extreme economic uncertainty.
If you’re concerned about where today’s cost-of-living pressures may lead, learn more about diversifying with physical precious metals.
It’s true, this is a problem that could’ve been dealt with back in 2008, but no one wanted to be blamed for the financial pain caused by taking that bitter deflationary medicine. And no one is willing to accept that blame today – so the can-kicking will continue, the deficit spending and emergency money-printing will continue, and we’ll all suffer the consequences.
BGG - About the Author
About Brandon Smith
Brandon Smith has been an alternative economic and geopolitical analyst since 2006 and is the founder of Alt-market.us. He is a paid contributor to Birch Gold Group's blog.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Birch Gold Group.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Birch Gold Group.
BGG - CTA Option 2
