People in financial economics know how to handle a price series and how to construct an index. See, for instance, the Case-Shiller Index. This means that asset-price inflation is well understood, and indices are well-known: they're all over the serious media and people bet their pensions on them!

Why similar techniques couldn't be applied to the less sexy prices of everyday goods, I don't know...

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan