It's not "cold-hearted" to actually know what you're talking about.
As noted by MMI, most seniors today have almost no savings. Most of their net worth is in their homes. At 10% interest, a $20,000 savings account yields $2000 per year. While that's better than $20 a year, it's not going to save seniors, and it certainly isn't going to replace Social Security.
Higher inflation is bad for seniors. It erodes the value of what little savings they have, and makes everything cost more.
Higher inflation does not increase the purchasing power of Social Security. It erodes it, until the government makes a cost of living increase to match it. Wishing for massive inflation, so seniors can get more money from Social Security, is ridiculous.
Higher interest rates can be bad for seniors, for several reasons.
• It will take years to inch interest rates up to even 5%, and that's not very high as far as a savings account goes -- especially since around 3% of that gets whacked off by inflation in a typical year.
• The only reason to have very high interest rates (say, 15%) is if inflation is galloping out of control, and the Fed is using high interest rates to cool things down. The last time that happened was when Reagan took office, and it caused a recession.
• Going from 1% to 15% overnight would decimate the economy. The only way that can happen right now is if the Fed sends the overnight rate through the roof, which makes it expensive for banks to borrow, which means the banks won't lend, which means no one gets to borrow, which causes another financial crisis and global recession. Hard to see how that would be good for seniors.
As noted, if you want to give seniors more Social Security, then Congress needs to vote for an increase. But that is going to cause a whole host of issues. The Trust Fund is already going to run out around 2032, so if you want to give seniors more money, you're either going to hasten the demise of the Trust Fund, or you need to raise payroll taxes to pay for it.
What's your preference?
