I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours at Taco Bell with my friends eating burritos and drinking baja blast when I was in high school. It always came to $5.18 exactly. Before I was 16 and employed, I used to literally count out change and stuff it all in my pocket. I just checked what it would cost now, and it’s like twice as expensive. Not really afraid of being cornered by muh “erm, what are you, ENTITLED?” Yeah, I am. I do actually feel entitled to the same standard of living that I once had, and that my parents and grandparents CERTAINLY had. And I’m certainly not going to be gaslit by the same people who oversaw our decline into just accepting it. Their spiritual leftism is evident. “REAL men make their own burritos” just as “REAL men aren’t scared of crackheads on the subway.” Give me a break. I get that you’re MARRIED and a FATHER and that’s really freaking based, and I hope you enjoy making budget burritos at home, but young people aren’t going to accept that they’re not allowed to enjoy their youth in the same ways they implicitly understand previous generations were able to. There is an Al’s Toy Barn aisle of these Tough Love Conservative DadsTM who curiously only apply that animosity towards young white men. In the next breath, they praise the immigrants who leech off our country for “just wanting a better life.” Even romanizing their “work ethic” because they keep seeing them in construction vests. The CPI (Chipotle Price Index) does actually matter regardless of how you’d like to stomp your feet. Fortunately, Trump & Vance are aware of this fully, and in particular of how to actually address these concerns properly. But Neocons want to spoil it for one last chance to really stick it to the young people who hate them for failing to stop literally any of our problems. Enjoy it while you can I suppose.