American wages have stagnated, while the cost of living—affected by rising inflation and the unending Iran war—continues to climb. Yet the vice president has not been shy about the fact that he is, comparatively, living very large.JD Vance joined Dirty Jobs star Mike Rowe’s podcast Thursday to chat about faith, family, and the future of America. But amid the pair’s sprawling conversation, the vice president offered a bit of insight into how his new role has offered him a completely new lifestyle.“My life is—dude, totally transformed,” Vance said, eliciting laughter from Rowe.Vance earns a base official salary of $235,100 per year as America’s second-in-command, but of course the accoutrements of his high-powered office provide a litany of other perks.“I don’t go to the grocery store anymore. People go to the grocery store for me. Most of my meals—like, when I cook a meal—I love to cook, actually. Big baker. I like to cook for my kids as a special occasion, but I don’t have to cook anymore because I have an army of people willing to cook my food,” he continued. “My life is so weird. I fly around on a 757, no more TSA lines for me and the kids. It’s so weird, but it can become the sort of thing that if you internalize it, you start to become an entitled asshole,” Vance said.Vance: My life is-- dude, totally transformed. People go to the grocery store for me. I don't have to cook anymore because I have an army of people willing to cook my food. No more TSA lines for me. pic.twitter.com/4ystwLEKcG— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) July 10, 2026Maybe that executive branch dissonance could explain why Donald Trump claimed that Americans need to provide identification in order to go to the grocery store, or why the president has repeatedly insisted that groceries is “an old-fashioned word.”“We have a term ‘groceries,’” Trump told the leaders of the United Arab Emirates last year. “It’s an old term, but it means basically what you’re buying, food, it’s a pretty accurate term but it’s an old-fashioned sound.”Affordability is the chief concern for Americans heading into the midterm elections, according to an April Gallup poll. In January, a New York Times/Siena poll found that 65 percent of American voters felt that a middle-class lifestyle was out of reach, while 77 percent said that a middle-class life was more difficult to attain than it was a generation before. All in all, a majority of Americans feel that they’ve been priced out of a broad range of necessities, including education, health care, and having a family.Those sentiments have surely only been exacerbated in the months since. The cost of oil and gas has skyrocketed since the onset of the Iran war; utility bills have continued to climb; health insurance premiums have drastically outpaced the growth of employee paychecks; and homeownership seems like an increasingly unattainable dream due to low market availability and astronomical prices.Meanwhile, the White House has repeatedly detached itself from efforts that would aid America’s middle and lower classes. Case in point: Trump’s decision Friday morning to divorce his office from the bipartisan housing bill. Trump did so in another futile attempt to force through his unpopular voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act.