Kevin — Thanks for the reply.

1. Low real rates are a problem for everyone who supplies money, but real rates are low because recipients don’t have the bargaining power to demand more, not because inflation somehow confiscates something they negotiated. Social Security recipients are on Medicare, which is indexed to medical costs. Medical care is getting more expensive, but that appears to be driven by factors other than monetary policy. If core inflation were zero, medical costs would still be rising.
2. If 4% was “just an example,” you could have used 2% , but you didn’t. Since the Fed’s target is, as you say, 2%, why rile up the hoopleheads with a number that is above what we all know to be the target? (I don’t understand the point about equities.)
3. Remember the point of your article — inflation is theft. A policy of modest, predictable inflation is not theft. Neither is honest failure to hit that target. Nothing is certain in the world, except, perhaps that people will cite the lack of certainty as if it mattered in a context where it doesn’t.
4. Lumping so-called “financial asset inflation” into the “inflation” category is word play. Unwanted inflation causes those values to fall. I don’t see anything unsustainable about asset prices unless and until the price of capital rises. When that happens, the markets will adjust. Whatever the macro implications of that adjustment, it will have nothing to do with inflation being theft. (Because inflation isn’t theft.)
5. Incompetent government is incompetent government. What’s that got to do with whether inflation is theft?