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".
It wasn't logical, it was indeed a magic number (at least 1% was; 0.3 coins/minute is derived from the 1%/year) chosen at the start more or less arbitrary manner based on subjective views of what was useful to do. If it turns out to be a disastrous choice with horrible consequences, then Monero will fail. This is an experiment.
I really like the way you don't sugar coat shit.

Well to be fair it was before ASIC's for Scrypt and the doggie explosion which really fueled the alt race. Which really was what killed LTC. Well that and the lack of Dev support.