Like you start thinking about it and you think what an idiot I am. I could have actually gotten a 22% yield every year for 10 years, you know, buying a long bond, which struck me, you know as a tech investor is the most awful investment decision ever. Right? So I ended up in this bizarre situation and I developed a more nuanced appreciation of inflation like that you know, there's an old saying in propaganda, you know, all of our focus groups, all of our studies that they've shown us, that we can't tell people what to think, but we can tell them what to think about. And so when the media talks about inflation, they talk about CPI and everybody nods, and they all worry about CPI coming. But in fact, CPI is an arbitrary measure where you cherry pick a market basket of things that are not going to go up in cost, if you like, and then you call that CPI.
And so if you actually, if you actually create an array of all the products, services, and assets in the world that you might purchase with the cash flow that you generate from working, then I think that there's also, there's almost like there's four standard buckets and one special bucket. The first bucket is deflating products like a video and music and maps and information and generic drugs and commodities, anything manufactured news and books, and anything that could be dematerialized during the mobile wave that's on your iPhone, you know is deflating or, or anything dematerialized to an iPad or a computer and anything manufactured by a robot or in a big factory or anything with a low variable cost and a high fixed cost, computer chips, what have you, they get stamped out and massive amounts, and they're all deflating. There's no inflation there.
And then the next category is flat to 2% and that's like secondary property, property in the secondary markets are manual labor, unskilled, branded consumables. They kind of hold their value, take up a little bit, 1, 2% a year government services, regulated services. And I might not be perfect here, but it's a rough bucket of ideas. And then, you know, then the third bucket is what nobody talks about a bucket where prices are going up like 6 to 8% a year. And that's like luxury products, scarce products, elite education, elite medicine, elite services, like an Ivy league education or good medical care. And I know this cause I went to MIT. It was costing $9,600 a year when I went there 30 years ago. And it costs $60,000 a year now. And so you kind of do the math 30 years going up by a factor of five or six, and it's not 2%.
And so that's your 7% monetary supply expansion, I suppose. And then I get to this last horrifically painful category where inflation is going up between 8 and 24% a year. And that's equities debt, prime, luxury property, and scarce art. So the S & P 500. I mean, if we look at the S & P index from 1000 to 3,500, over 10 years, that's that gets you a decent clip. And then if you look at that 10 year treasury bill that I talked about, so 22% rate for 10 years, and if you look at penthouse apartment in New York or house in the Hamptons, or an acre of beach front property in South Florida, anything water, I joke LA New York, Miami, San Francisco, London. You know, if you wanted to get a house in the middle of the country that nobody wants to live in, that is not going up 8% a year, but if you're in the magic mile of London or downtown in Central Park or wherever it is, then that stuff's going through the roof.
And so those are the scarce assets. And of course, I've got one last category, which is, which is inflating faster than 25%. You want to guess what that is,
