I'm a newb as well, but I have thought something along similar lines before. A small, steady amount of inflation as you suggest seems like a good thing. From my understanding, I think only deflation or inflation are possibilities; it's either one or the other. I'm not sure about that, but since coins will inevitably be lost, and more and more people use Bitcoin, right now it's set up to be deflationary, and the only other way to counteract that is to make it inflationary in some way. I suppose that you could try to make it result in 0% inflation, but that would be difficult.
Why do you think inflation is better than deflation?
As for the possibilities of other currencies supplementing Bitcoin, that's certainly a possible solution, but for the sake of convenience (which is huge in terms of getting everyday people to adopt it), I think having Bitcoin be slightly inflationary is a better solution.
I doubt you'll be able to convince enough people to form the consensus that would be neccessary to make that change. So you are welcome to wish for it, hope for it, and want it, but you aren't going to get it with bitcoin. The design is already created. It is far easier to create a new currency and try to convince people that it is better than bitcoin than it is to make bitcoin inflationary.