I live in Finland which is a pretty 'expensive' country, I come from the UK which is less so but not really cheap. I live/lived in the capitals of both countries pretty much exclusively.

I visited the States in 2019 (Boston), and then didn't until last week (NYC).

The level of inflation in the US for everyday things between that time seemed insanely high compared to anything I'd seen in Europe. How anyone couldn't look at the price of rent and food and whatever and think "5 years ago I was paying a lot less" and have that not feed massively into their decision making process at the (private) ballot box is beyond me.