When you fight a war, while cutting taxes, and increasing social spending, as did LBJ, it leads to inflation because you have to print money to pay the bills.The deficit is going down, thanks to Bush's tax cuts. LBJ never cut taxes; that was Kennedy. There would be no inflation today if gasoline prices were factored out.
Leaving out defense spending is disingenous, and you know it. Reagan never cut spending and agreed to four tax increases.
The core inflation rate is about
2%. It is going to increase to 3% this year, I suspect. The genie is getting close to getting out of the bottle. It is grand that petroleum prices are less important to the economy than they were in the 1970's. If they were, we would really be in the soup. The problem is, is that energy prices factor into the prices of so many other goods over time - but less so now, it this information age economy than before. And so it goes.