Macros make language design experimentation easier. This issue is not orthogonal to tackling the other issues the OP cares about.
There are good reasons to doubt the overall value of macros in production code - I won't argue this either way - but OCaml has had success by separating the macro expansion mechanism (camlp4) from the main language. People who want macros can have them, people who want a production language without macros can have that too.
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Macros make language design experimentation easier. This issue is not orthogonal to tackling the other issues the OP cares about.
There are good reasons to doubt the overall value of macros in production code - I won't argue this either way - but OCaml has had success by separating the macro expansion mechanism (camlp4) from the main language. People who want macros can have them, people who want a production language without macros can have that too.