One cannot reasonably accept all companies’ adjusted earnings without critically assessing them.
Sure. You want to exclude cap gains and that is a reasonable one for you. For someone having lease obligations showing up as liability is wrong, for someone stock based compensation…
The point is, it is perfectly okay if I make an adjustment, but, but, but… you cannot. See, I like to exclude one time expenses, there are folks who argue some one-time are recurring. May be, May be not. But if my goal is to understand the true earnings of the Index, just ignore one-time get earnings power and then adjust the multiples to be conservative.
These are reasonable positions used by reasonable investors. But, the “enthusiasts” (whether you are Berkshire, Tesla or “growth”) just believe in their own religion, for ex: you can drop mythical “value” in this board, and sweep any reasonable conversations under the rug.