The Taco Index: Inflation and the Latino Vote

Latino USA

Futuro Media and PRX

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In recent years, rising grocery prices have shocked many of us, changing how we discuss inflation. For economists, inflation measures how quickly prices increase over a set period, but for most consumers, it’s a matter of affordability.

We all have prices we track, like milk, pizza, and tacos. For our host Maria Hinojosa, a good taco tops that list. In San Diego, one of the U.S. cities hit hardest by inflation, she spoke with local taqueros and families about the rising cost of goods, and its implications for the upcoming election.

Editorial note: Interviews were recorded in late April and May.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Dear listener, we have a warning for you.
0:07.0	It's a little bit different because we're warning you that you're probably going to get
0:13.7	really hungry as you listen to this episode. Okay, you've been warned. So there's a
0:19.8	Tik-Tok video that went viral earlier this year.
0:24.0	I just found a Taco Bell receipt from 2012.
0:28.2	Two beefy five-layer burritos total.
0:32.2	259.
0:34.0	259.
0:36.0	Can you even get anything from Taco Bell for 259 anymore, like one item?
0:41.0	Where do we go wrong? So that got more than 800,000 views and there were so
0:48.8	many comments like well that's what Taco Bell is supposed to cost, like two bucks 59, but the same order today would set you back more than $7, about three times as much.
1:07.9	Now, if you know me you know I am not a Taco Bell fan and also this is Latino USA so we know about real Mexican tacos, but this video did capture something we've all
1:18.2	been thinking about a lot. Prices keep rising in America. And that is the biggest jump in six months.
1:24.0	This new inflation data comes on the heels of two worse and expected reports.
1:28.0	Over the past couple of years, a lot of us have had a reaction like this you know you go to buy
1:34.7	something you go to the grocery store and at the end you see the price and you're like
1:38.9	wait what this costs what And the truth is the way people use the word inflation has shifted.
1:49.0	So for economists inflation is a measure of how fast prices rise over a set time frame a month or a year for example
1:59.5	For the rest of us inflation became a way to talk about affordability in life in the United States
2:06.2	kind of overall.
2:08.5	And even if you're not an economist, you do know how much you're supposed to be spending for let's say like a gallon of
2:14.5	milk or a slice of pizza or a five layer beefy burrito. Okay so we're not going
	...

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