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Seems to me that that's what static typing proponents have been saying for years (if not decades), and it still isn't true.

That said, I'm currently hacking on a compiler to see if I can come up with a design for a static language that's almost as pleasant to use as a dynamic one, so I'm not completely hopeless. But it certainly seems like the data point that until now no such superior type system (strict but flexible) has become widely popular should not be underestimated.

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That's because it takes years or even decades to really get this right, like a lot of other sophisticated technology. Look how long it took to get the JVM to where it us today. This is fundamental research and hard stuff.

What you are looking at are not two variables (strict, flexible), but also "ease of use". Arguably dependent-typed languages are most strict, but also most flexible: you can write type of a function that only accepts primes on input. They are hard to use though. Dynamically-typed languages are flexible and easy to use, but not strict. Java-likes are strict and easy to use, but they're very unflexible.

So we're talking about type inference - which way are you going?