> Tailwind would be a lot more appealing to me if it was coupled with some system where I could say "class X inherits from tailwind classes A, B and C" and thus have a layer of abstraction over just writing properties.

This mindset is the problem. You don't want or need this abstraction in the CSS, what you want is to encapsulate these styles properties in a reusable "HTML component", and then use that component wherever needed. It then carries those style properties into every instantiation. What use are semantic style classes in this context? Atomic CSS makes perfect sense in this context and makes composable development a breeze by comparison.