[ytpete]

Surely there must be some price index that uses a basket including these additional important "goods"... does anybody know of one?

I think items like housing and transportation costs are used by some regions when calculating the cost of living that determines the "poverty line" for aid programs. So there's probably already a well-vetted process for looking up some of those price points. Then it's just a matter of aggregating them and tracking that value over time...