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The online discourse, I've been watching this week is the $20 Burrito. As a super TLDR; this is an intra-right argument that got started by one conservative saying young conservatives are upset about food affordability, and gave an offhand example about '$20 burritos'. The response was a combination of:
Burritos aren't actually that unaffordable, the rate of increase in unaffordability has come down, also you can make them at home for cheaper, also you aren't entitled to eating out.
The response to the response is that this is a losing message to one's own side, avoids accountability for losing focus on why 2024 went Trump, and suspiciously aligned to Iran war support.
Before I address that specifically, a little about my personal burrito.
I am as close to a controlled middleclass experiment as possible.
I live in the same zipcode I grew up in; my kids go to the same Catholic school I went to. I work in the same industry as my father. I aspire to give my family the same life I grew up with. I can't live the life my parents lived.
In the 90s my parents moved us into a new construction. Today, I live in smaller a house, on a smaller lot built in the mid-70s. In realtive terms, I live in a house that is not only smaller, but nearly 50 years older than the one my father did.
My parents had >8 kids. I have 5.
Here's the kicker: My father was an individual contributor, software developer. I am a Director-level at a mid-market software company; This isn't title inflation, I manage an org of about 25, including multiple layers of leadership.
While being considerably more successful than my father in my career, I financially struggle to same life he lived.
I don't disagree with any of the above points, or probably other reasonable ones, but they all miss the point: I want to live the life I grew up in, I am willing to work hard for it, I held up my part of the implied social contract, I think that the failure of the implied social contract is a BAD thing, something to be seen as regrettable, and I want my politicians to focus on fixing it.
Burritos aren't actually that unaffordable, the rate of increase in unaffordability has come down, also you can make them at home for cheaper, also you aren't entitled to eating out.
This is all arguably true. But yet, is a losing message. Especially when your side won on addressing the real and percieved reasons we can't get affordable burritos, and super especially when the other side's solution is 'free burritos for our friends, mass immigration for our enemies'
The US middle class opportunity has changed in negatives ways for reasons that don't benefit me, and I didn't ask for, and instead of my political side agreeing to help address these issues, they are telling me to support a foreign war
There's really nothing to this. You're comparing a nostalgia-tinged view of your childhood to your current situation where you're the adult, and finding the former to be better. With no numbers, so it's all vibes.
Yes, software is a funny field that way; an IC in the right place can make more than a middle-manager elsewhere.
As for burritos, a steak burrito in Midtown Manhattan is $13.50. Not $20.
No, I'm not. I know the numbers, Im just not going to write an autobiography here. Again, I am very close to a natural experiment. I know what cost what then and now. No I'm not going to deanonymize myself to show my reciepts.
Holy fuck. way to just do the meme.
'Tsk.Tsk. Afforability is fine.' - is going to bring us DSA rule, and fuck it, we deserve it because of this shit.
The DSA is dealing in unreality. I am not a politician and would prefer not to. That you perceive a problem, or that a lot of people perceive a problem, does not mean that problem is even real, let alone that it looks like what they claim (see also: food deserts). That's true even if someone can get power and wreck everything by promising to solve the problem. In this case referring to "do the meme" is just a new way of engaging in the fallacy of poisoning the well; that you can anticipate the response does not mean the response is incorrect.
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