I don't have the 8 year background on this chain like many others here but I've been digging into the workings of Hive and thus have an opinion, even if it's less informed.

Excessive inflation is never a good thing, and if it exists, it clearly has to outweigh the additional printing. This can work temporarily but it seems both aren't the case:

• HBD APR of 15% doesn't lead to large amounts of capital flowing into HBD from other stable coins (obviously) so this should be considered a failure (that's okay) and moved away from. I'd even say that 6% protocol issued inflation is on the high end and could be reduced to 3% or even 0%. Why does the protocol want this to begin with?
  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the 15%, but this hasn't led me to buy 10k HBD and put it into savings, mostly for liquidity concerns

• I know little about the DHF and don't usually look at all the current active proposals, but they clearly haven't led to a massive influx of new users / new businesses / new HIVE buyers, which is what every chain needs. As much as I know it would hurt existing projects, but I guess the right thing to do would to (at least temporarily) halt ALL payments from the DHF and reconsider the funding and criteria towards a more sustainable model.

In the end, the people running the chain need to consider what the chain needs. As opposed to other chains, Hive doesn't seem (excuse my ignorance) to have a body like a foundation that would steer things like business development, with a clear goal and kind of a business model in mind.

The competition out there is massive, and Hive as an ecosystem needs to consider its strengths and double down on these rather than hanging on to some band aids.

Just a comment on the math you laid out in the post (might again be my ignorance):
Shouldn't the total HBD inflation be calculated based on HBD in Savings rather than HBD in circulation? I imagine a large portion is in savings, just wanted to clear this up in my head.