No one keeps track of inflation for anything other than consumer goods. Inflation is floating around 1-2% according to the Fed. They conveniently don't track things like fuel prices or food because they are too "volatile". And things like asset inflation simply isn't considered in the equation. But the reality is that upper income people have 401ks with stocks in them and lower income people live paycheck to paycheck. Since 2008 when the Fed start QE, the stock market has gone through the room, including companies like FANG.
If you're not exposed to the stock market or housing market, then you're fucked.
CPI is the consumer price index, which tracks a variety of prices as an estimate of inflation. The sub-categories are tracked individually, and then averaged together into the overall CPI number.
Even if you distrust the Fed entirely, we can use CBOE futures (the futures market), which has historical performance on a variety of food commodities (pork bellies, orange juice) and fuel (sweet light crude oil). CBOE is literally the free market and non-government.
---------
Fuel prices are down over the past decade due to the uptick in US oil production. Remember $4+ / gallon US averages? (and $6+ in high cost places like Hawaii?)
COVID19 has also decimated oil prices. Other goods have gone up in price, but fuel prices are really, really low right now, pulling inflation lower.
What I meant is that Fed Policy is dictated by Core PCE, so they don't look at that when setting rates. So it doesn't matter if fuel prices skyrocket or drop, it's not anything that gets the headlines. The only thing you hear about is Core PCE or Core CPI. If no policy is enacted by regular CPI, then who cares. The Fed only sees no inflation regardless of the inflation we see all around us.
> Both CPI and PCE are both up slightly in the past year. Both are measures of inflation and clearly indicate slightly higher prices.
Sure, if you consider 1.5% PCE and indication of inflation. By your definition, 0.1% PCE would indicate inflation. But in reality, the target PCE is 2.0%. The numbers that the Fed are using to dictate policy indicate that inflation is not high enough, and yet the evidence of asset inflation is irrefutable.
> Why are you trying to spread misinformation? What's in it for you?
I can say the same thing with you. Why are you spreading false claims about inflation? But such discussions go nowhere pretty fast. As such, I'll take my leave with you. If you have no faith in my discussion points, there's no point continuing.
My final words: the suggestion that the Fed ignores energy prices / food prices is ridiculous at face value. Its listed right there in the statistics and well categorized in the statistics they watch.
All such indices show the same broad inflation trends, usually shifted by a small amount. These trends are also consistent with private replication efforts such as the Billion Prices Project (http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/), which uses directly-sampled retail-price data.
> They conveniently don't track things like fuel prices or food because they are too "volatile".
They do in fact track these things. They are excluded from core price indices because of their volatility; setting monetary policy based on gas or food prices would result in wild swings from month to month. Core CPI changes show the same broad trends as the full CPI (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Dtzv), without a persistent level difference.
> But the reality is that upper income people have 401ks with stocks in them and lower income people live paycheck to paycheck.
... and your policy prescription would hurt just this category of people the most. The only lever the Fed has on inflation is to raise interest rates, which also acts to reduce demand in the economy. All other things equal, that throws people out of work and risks causing a recession.
Your concern for ordinary people is admirable, but focus on so-called "asset price inflation" would exactly put the interests of capital-owners (seeking larger risk-free return) over people without existing assets. In fact, unexpected inflation is better for those without financial wealth than those with it.
If you're not exposed to the stock market or housing market, then you're fucked.