“Oh noes! Commie Joe raised your mediocre burrito’s prices by 4%! Vote Republican!” says this Mike Berg spokeswiener. Note his clip of the New York Times article omits the wage increase reported, which says “In May, in an effort to hire 20,000 employees in a tight labor market, Chipotle said it was raising wages and would pay workers from $11 to $18 an hour.” Linked in the Times article is reporting from May saying Chipotle was planning to raise the average hourly wage to $15, which unfortunately does not say exactly what the average wage was prior to that announcement.
According to Glassdoor, the average hourly base pay at Chipotle is currently $11 per hour nationally, and raising this to $15 makes for a 36% increase. So this is where Republicans are at these days: They’re complaining that the buying power of Chipotle employees increasing by more than a third comes at the expense of customers – from whom a $6.50 chicken burrito will now cost them $6.77.
This is what you’re supposed to use to justify to yourself why you’re voting for the party that won’t investigate why the Capitol was violently invaded by a horde of their fans on January 6th.