Trump Surrogate Threatens America With ‘A Taco Truck on Every Corner’
And the problem is?
A taco truck on every corner? So, heaven?
Marco Gutierrez, founder of Latinos for Trump, made a nasty threat on MSNBC Thursday night. “My culture is a very dominant culture and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it you’ll have taco trucks on every corner,” said Gutierrez.
Latinos for Trump founder @MarcoGutierrez: "you're gonna have taco trucks on every corner" #inners https://t.co/Vifo3q7Ah8
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 2, 2016
I’m not entirely sure what problems Gutierrez is referring to nor did he effectively clarify what he meant, but would an abundance of taco trucks be such a bad thing?
Surely an influx of tacos would drive down the price, making tacos the most readily accessible and affordable food around.
Phillip Bump explores the economic ramifications of a ‘taco truck on every corner’:
The first question we must answer is how many trucks we’re talking about. A corner is dependent on an intersection of street, a place where two roads meet or where one road turns. For the purposes of our thought experiment, we will assume that Gutierrez didn’t mean a truck literally on every corner — that would be ridiculous. Instead, let’s assume that he meant a truck at every intersection.
There doesn’t appear to be an official tally of the number of intersections in the United States, in part thanks to our using this term to describe a lot of possible combinations of streets.
We do have estimates of the number of intersections with stoplights in the country, though. In 2004, the Institute of Transportation Engineers estimated that there are 265,000 “signalized intersections” in the country. But that report also included a rule of thumb suggesting a ratio between the number of intersections with stoplights and the population: For every 1,000 people, one intersection with a stoplight. That doesn’t quite hold in New York City, where there are 12,460 intersections with stoplights and a population of only 8.4 million. But it’s fairly close, so let’s use it. That would peg the current number of intersections with stoplights in America at 322,000.
That’s just intersections with stoplights, of course. Estimating how many other intersections there are is even harder. So for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there are nine un-signalized intersections for every intersection with a stoplight. The density of stoplights is higher in a city — Manhattan has 2,820 signals but probably about 3,500 intersections — but out in more rural areas, they’re rarer. Here’s a random swath of rural Kansas: Lots of intersections, few signals.
That would give us about 3.2 million intersections in the United States. And it would mean that, per Gutierrez’s vision of the future, we’d suddenly see 3.2 million conveniently located taco trucks. How ubiquitous is that? Well, it’s one on every corner. But we can also compare it to Starbucks, which seems pretty ubiquitous in a lot of places. In 2012, there were about 11,000 Starbucks locations in the United States.
But it’s where we’re headed, apparently, if Trump loses. That’s good news for the economy in one way. If you assume that three people work in each truck, that’s 9.6 million new jobs created. The labor force in August was 159.4 million, with 144.6 million employed. Adding 9.6 million taco truck workers would help America reach nearly full employment — and that’s just the staffing in the trucks. Think about all of the ancillary job creation: mechanics, gas station workers, Mexican food truck management executives. We’d likely need to increase immigration levels just to meet the demand.
His whole piece is worth reading and should probably be a Pulitzer contender.
If you need me, I’ll be daydreaming about tacos.
The entire interview is here:
DISCLAIMER: The author of this post LOVES tacos. Like, really loves tacos. They’re probably her favorite non-coffee food.
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Comments
Hey, I’m DOWN widdit…!!!
Street corn, tacos, and good cerveza.
If they’re as good as Torchy Tacos in Austin, that would be heaven!
There are a lot of screwed up things about Austin, most of them having to do with the over-population of progressives in this town.
But there is also a LOT to love about Austin, and one of the things I love the most is the food, with tacos being one of our favorite food groups.
Yes Rags, Torchy’s makes some great tacos, but you have got to try Tacodeli. They truly put Torchy’s to shame (although you can’t beat the Torchy’s queso).
Tacodeli is getting ready to open a location in Houston too.
Omigosh, elotes. One of my most favorite things to eat ever.
I ate at a taco stand the other day. They had tacos de lengua (beef tongue), tacos de barbacoa (beef cheek meat), but I went with the tacos de chorizo. I’m going to try the sopes next. I’ve never had one of those.
Fear not, for we shall face the peril!
Seriously, how serious was the Latinos for Trump organization anyway? Was it always pro-amnesty, and just found the right time with his Mexican presidential meeting to (pardon the language) stick a fork into him?
When I was youngun and attended college, we had Chinese food trucks on every corner. It wasn’t great food, to be sure, but even so-so Chinese food is pretty darn good.
And yet somehow we didn’t turned Chinese. I think we’ll survive taco trucks, especially if they are cheap. Around where I am, only cheap tacos are Taco Bell, and … well…. I am pretty sure they do not measure up to truck tacos.
No, a taco truck on every corner does actually mean that each intersection has to have four taco trucks. Otherwise I would have to cross the street to get a taco. And some streets, like 5th Avenue or Santa Monica Blvd for example, can get pretty busy during rush hour.
And the problem is the heartburn, especially if you add generous amounts of salsa and tequila.
Tequila and good food is how we keep northerners north of the Red River. LOL!!
Lol! I’m impartial to vodka and dill myself, granted I’m not as hardcore about the dill as some other individuals:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/10/dill-russia-herb-pizza-sushi-soup-hummus-food-ruin
If you think a taco truck on every corner is a good thing, move to Mexico. Some of us would prefer living in the United States of our Founders over Tijuana North. Culture matters. If taco trucks built a society worth living in, the Mexican invaders would not be coming to the US. Build the wall and load up the boxcars for mass deportations.
A taco truck nether builds nor destroys a society. It’s just a taco truck.
Well I suppose you should stay out of Texas then. Down here our heritage is a mix of Anglo and Mexican, and most of us are quite happy with it. And even those that aren’t will put an ass-whipping on a mouthy Yankee just for good measure.
Is there a murderer or rapist serving the Tacos? Because that part I might have a problem with.
And there is nothing better than a good breakfast burrito to start the day. Were it not for the Mexican influence on our Texas culture we’d be blah like the other 56 states. Damn, I need some cabrito.
In some cities, that space is already taken by the falafel trucks and grilled cheese trucks.
Here’s the deal… Pretty soon, taco trucks would diversify in order to capture market segments that were tired of tacos.
Seriously, this is how markets work…when you let them. Pretty soon, you’d have Thai trucks, Polish trucks, and French provincial trucks.
Wound mi, hurt mi, beat mi… Gemme great food out of trucks!!!
I live in a majority Hispanic community and we don’t have Taco Trucks on every corner. What exactly are we doing wrong?
You must have a nice café that was once a gas station. That’s the way Rosa’s started In San Angelo. The corporate cafes aren’t as good as the old gas station joint on Bryant Street, but they are okay.
Actually that’s where this scenario fails.
Going from an Hispanic on every corner to a taco truck in the same place is a step that just doesn’t seem to happen very often.
If they were Chinese instead, just off the boat, we’d have more laundries and takeout restaurants than houses in my neighborhood.
But for some mysterious reason not every—what’s the word nowadays? Oh right, “community”—precipitates a small-business revival.
Hmmm. Taco trucks that serve haram. This could be a “two birds with one stone” thing.
There is already a huge amount of Arabic influence in Mexican food. When Spain came to what is now Mexico in the early 1500’s they had just conquered Granada and there was a significant amount of cultural overlap from 400 or something so years of fighting.
Tacos al pastor are cooked on a vertical spit like gyros… Puebla has tacos árabes which are served on pita bread. Tacos with halal prepared meat might be a thing somewhere.
No doubt there are middle eastern influences, but I thought gyros were inauthentic.
Also, not to get too geeky, but the thing about folk food ways is that it’s hard to determine from where they originate. So many cultures have a flat piece of bread in which they wrap things. There are lavash, blini, tacos, pita bread, crepes and who knows who had it first.
Bring it on! I love Tacos!
This just shows all of us how scared the wacky left is.
They know Trump is pulling close and ahead in some polls.
They are beyond frantic to try and damage him and his campaign any way they can. Don’t you idiots know he is a….
RACIST! He has to be because he is running against Crooked Hillary!
The left is now attacking the black pastor who is meeting with Trump today in Detroit! The panic sets in on the left!
By “taco trucks” he means crime and population displacement. Unfortunately, the population has already been conditioned to welcome these things…
Backfire.
Taco trucks are great.