What is roughly constant?
The Fed’s inflation target is now 2% ( below the 3% average)
I’d go for the 2% (or even 5%) target iff food, (pre-tax) energy, and housing purchase prices were included. Basically returning to the saner pre-1980-or-so inflation metric.
Basically discourage speculative investment in necessities and maintain a feedback mechanism to prevent bubbles in same. Make energy adjustment pre-tax to allow for taxation of fossil fuels to fund investment in cleaner sources.
If you want to be a landlord, OK. If you want to horde real-estate and flip it, screw you. If you want to be a farmer, chef, or grocer, OK. If you want to trade in food futures, screw you. Same goes for energy.
It’s bizarre to exclude things that are CRITICAL from inflation metrics while leaving the fluff in there. If you want to create bubbles, create them in areas where the US is actually LACKING, like clean energy, infrastructure investment, etc.
Not in areas where we’re glutted, like housing or social network stocks 🙂
