I still think dividends should be implemented. Consider two subsets of users:
(a) Internet savvy crypto-anarchists and economics nerds
(b) Ordinary people who just want to buy and sell stuff online
Everything I've read about Bitshares suggests that, while (a) will be an important part of the userbase for Bitshares (or any new altcoin that launches in the near future), we want to eventually break into (b). And, while some subset of the users in (a) may well care more about inflation honesty, the people in market (b) really get more excited by things like "earn better interest than any bank will pay!" and "a piece of the action for every transaction!"
An individual user might theoretically be interested in the purchasing power of their money. But this depends on more than the total amount of coins that have been created -- it's a dynamic equilibrium affected by the velocity of money, hoarders that keep coins for long periods of time and/or don't trade on the markets you care about, and the total amount of goods and services being exchanged. Unlike the total number of coins that have ever been minted, the purchasing power of money is not something that could be automatically computed by the network.
And besides, there's a BitAsset for that
-- users who care can just convert their money to BitUSD (or later we might have some asset that's pegged to a basket of goods or something).