>Maybe they wouldn't do better, but they wouldn't have a trillion dollar incentive and ideally there'd be competing metrics.
The fact that no private entities tried to do anything similar (eg. bloomberg, s&p, msci) despite the massive incentive to do so (it's hard to price bonds/mortgages/loans if you can't trust the inflation numbers), suggests that the current number is already pretty good and/or that coming up with comparable numbers would be massively expensive. I think the problem is of expectations. You want a competitor to the BBC. You hope that it'll be something like propublica, but given the crowd associated with crypto, you'll probably end up with something like zerohedge.
>Health care: On a per capita basis, health spending has increased over 31-fold in the last four decades, from $353 per person in 1970 to $11,582 in 2019. [0]
From 1999 to 2019, the source you gave (Total national health expenditures, US $ per capita) 154% increase. The "Medical Care Services" component of the CPI grew by 112% in the same time period. The figure you gave also doesn't account for an aging population (older people spend more on healthcare, irrespective of cost), so the "true" difference is probably smaller.
>Housing: Median home price was around ~210k in today's dollars ten years ago and is now ~314k [1]
Because looking at home prices is a poor way of assessing housing cost increases. If you factor in falling interest rates, the cost of a house has actually gone down. Houses have also gotten bigger and better equipped in the last few decades, which might increase the overall sticker price, but arguably shouldn't contribute to CPI increase.
The reason there's no concerted effort for Bloomberg, S&P, etc to create an alternative inflation index is because there's no point. It won't be able to be integrated into financial products. Finance is extremely regulated and apart from some bespoke CDS, getting acceptance of a main stream financial product with this weird index would be very difficult. With smart contracts there is no approval process and a very low cost to create such products. But who knows, maybe no one is interested, but it's still an important project
> That seems pretty consistent with the figures from CPI:
CPI 1970: 31.1 CPI 2021: 570.6 Increase: 570/31 = 18-fold compared to 31-fold. Don't just say "looks similar" when you could do simple division and realize it's not similar. I don't think there is a single economist that would argue that health care spending has not grown considerably faster than the rate of inflation.
Here's the continuously compounded rate of growth of health expenditures as per the st louis fed
>The reason there's no concerted effort for Bloomberg, S&P, etc to create an alternative inflation index is because there's no point. It won't be able to be integrated into financial products. Finance is extremely regulated and apart from some bespoke CDS, getting acceptance of a main stream financial product with this weird index would be very difficult.
1. you're thinking that the index would have to be integrated into the product itself (eg. this bond pays s&p inflation index + 2%) for it to be useful. This isn't the case. Even for forecasting or internal rate-setting purposes it would be massively useful.
2. If you check the website for s&p or msci, they got an endless list of indexes. Some of them are even integrated into financial products (eg. tracked by ETF or derivatives). Exotic indexes is definitely not a problem for them.
>I don't think there is a single economist that would argue that health care spending has not grown considerably faster than the rate of inflation.
I think the problem here is that you're conflating per-capita spending with price increase. As mentioned earlier an aging population would increase per-capita spending without necessarily increasing price. People opting to buy better, but more expensive care would also increase per-capita spending without necessarily increasing price.
>You can do the same for housing [1]
What's your contradictory source for the actual price of housing?
The fact that no private entities tried to do anything similar (eg. bloomberg, s&p, msci) despite the massive incentive to do so (it's hard to price bonds/mortgages/loans if you can't trust the inflation numbers), suggests that the current number is already pretty good and/or that coming up with comparable numbers would be massively expensive. I think the problem is of expectations. You want a competitor to the BBC. You hope that it'll be something like propublica, but given the crowd associated with crypto, you'll probably end up with something like zerohedge.
>Health care: On a per capita basis, health spending has increased over 31-fold in the last four decades, from $353 per person in 1970 to $11,582 in 2019. [0]
That seems pretty consistent with the figures from CPI: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAM2
From 1999 to 2019, the source you gave (Total national health expenditures, US $ per capita) 154% increase. The "Medical Care Services" component of the CPI grew by 112% in the same time period. The figure you gave also doesn't account for an aging population (older people spend more on healthcare, irrespective of cost), so the "true" difference is probably smaller.
>Housing: Median home price was around ~210k in today's dollars ten years ago and is now ~314k [1]
Because looking at home prices is a poor way of assessing housing cost increases. If you factor in falling interest rates, the cost of a house has actually gone down. Houses have also gotten bigger and better equipped in the last few decades, which might increase the overall sticker price, but arguably shouldn't contribute to CPI increase.
see: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri...
>Education: The cost of college increased by more than 25% in the last 10 years [2]
The "Tuition, Other School Fees, and Childcare" component of the CPI has increased 37.4% in the same time period.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEEB