After all, households almost daily pay for energy and food items – which are excluded from the most prominent measures of core inflation – when they fill up their cars at gas stations or visit a grocery store. Households, particularly less-affluent households, spend a major portion of their budgets on food and energy.
A focus on core inflation, which excludes these items, might be viewed as indicating that monetary policy makers are out of touch with what consumers really care about. Wouldn't it be better for monetary policy authorities to focus on headline inflation so that they include food and energy in their monitoring of consumer price inflation?