So no economic reasoning whatsoever to the choice of approx 0.9% inflation?
There is plenty of economic reasons, first being to secure the network,[/b] without network no transactions, like rpietila said its close to what gold is now. 1% is bellow the long-run ideal inflation on a large scale economy (believed to be 2%). 1% runs of the risk of deflation with eventual lost coins it will become de-facto deflationary in the long run.
I didn't say tail emission was a bad idea. I agree with it. It just shouldn't be a "magic number" value. And Monero is NOT gold. Most everything about it is quite different than gold. There seems to be no logical reason to choose that value based on "that's how gold is".