What might you presume the inflation rate to have been the past few years? Less than 2% as the Fed says?
In a more general addressing of some comments in this thread - govt stats are utter BS. Inflation is much higher than 2%, and true unemployment is higher than 3.5% (or 4% as it was mentioned here). That's a non-partisan fact. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. But yea, everyone keep drinking the beltway Kool Aid.
People commenting in this thread are dumb as fuck. Don't bother with them, I lol'd reading comments, dozu says Dow is heading to 40k next year and bone still thinks Oil prices are dictated by Supply/Demand and not Algo's... I wrote about increasing wages to boost Consumption GDP and it turned into democrats vs republicans ? You can raise Consumption through Wage Increase or Debt, that's it... I specifically wrote stagnating Advanced Economies, obviously the US can take a page from it, but they already have highest Consumption GDP in the world, so it's not urgent for them. It would help the US to increase wages across the board, not just minimum wage but it's not as urgent yet, they can push their debt a little further until they become the next china.
For Europe or Japan, Wage growth has to increase without a doubt, implement wage increases of 10 % over 4 years, while reducing Corporate Taxes 10 % over 4 years, reduce a little bit social benefits, and slowly move away from Globalization through Tariffs, by increasing innovation in 3D Printing and Manufacturing Robotics... Legalize weed collect tax revenues and collect more revenues from online gambling and casinos, it's clear as day Monetary Policy is becoming pretty useless and just sky rocketing Inflation, the world doesn't need 5-6 % a year Inflation anymore, it needs better Fiscal Policy in Advanced Economies, better government initiatives.
U3 Unemployment is what they parrot for the Media to feed the sheep's with, if you are out of a job and haven't looked for work in 4 weeks, you aren't considered part of the work force anymore, you suddenly disappear and don't count in data anymore... U6 is a better measure cause it's the total unemployed without that 4 weeks scam, U6 for June 2019 was 7.20 % Unemployment... Full Time employment has been on a decline this year in the US, at a decent pace as well, and they count all those Mickey Mouse part time Uber/Lyft bs jobs as full time employment, imagine if they didn't ? On top of that, don't forget 1 Trillion a year deficit and highest Corporate debt of all time... Employment numbers have become political tools