A more fundamental way of saying it is that negative real interest rates are a form of financial repression that slowly appropriates savings to the benefit of debtors, including the government.
As a reminder, real interest rates are the interest rate less inflation and taxes. If you don’t net anything on your deposit, you aren’t being paid for lending it.
Negative real interest rates slowly inflate away savings, which is a transfer of wealth from savers to debtors. It’s a particularly egregious thing to do to people who have been prudent and saved all of their lives. The policy either forces them to seek yield in risky investments, or face slow guaranteed confiscation.
Yet another reason to get rid of the Federal Reserve System and moved towards a Gold or other value based money standard.
I don’t see how they can every raise interest rates. The Debt bomb has grown so large that we are looking at very low interest rates for a very long time, perhaps forever.