(I posit) to mimic gold's inflation rate.

It's a nice number. High enough to profit and low enough to go unnoticed.

How many things and how often can I steal from your house without your noticing? That's what I think the premise is. But realistically, they can't control themselves and end up stealing more than is safe and resort to gaslighting the public that they're only stealing 2%, so they shouldn't worry.

Why did Satoshi want halves exactly 50%? If the fed insists and actually keeps their words no matter what I will give them some respect.

My generous read is they want their target to be as low as possible but they aren't confident that they can target 1% without slipping into deflation. And there it's some fear of deflation that there it's no way to turn it around. That's too generous though, it is pretty arbitrary.