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GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries
- OuterVale 1y agoLife imitates art. GoFundMe CEO: We Could Use A Few Fun Ones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIsXEkR5OVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIsXEkR5OVs
- digitalengineer 1y ago“The GoFundMe CEO hopes younger donors, who are often more values-driven, digitally native, and community-oriented, will push giving higher and faster.” I can’t believe it. THIS is what he hopes for? He is not stating he hopes his country can get out of this mess? Or researching what his company can do? He’s just looking after his cut.
- rat9988 1y agoWhat have you done yourself here about it? For myself, nothing.
- 63stack 1y agoOh get the fuck out with that. Not writing disingenuous feelgood bullshit, pretending that I work for some kind of greater good, while actually I'm pushing my own company, and trying to shift burden onto the "young digital natives". For a start.
- rcbdev 1y agoI don't know about the United States of America, but in my country it's very common to do volunteer work.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 63stack 1y agoMe neither, and same here.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago> I don't know about the United States of America, but in my country it's very common to do volunteer work. Your business plan for America: 1. Live in an unknown country Z that's not the US, about which you don't know much. 2. Do volunteer work in Z, consisting of doing highly unknown stuff X for a secret number of minutes per year Y. 3. ... 4. Imply unknown profits for Z 5. The US implements a copy of the unknown volunteering in unknown country Z 6. ... 7. Imply enough unknown profits for the US to fix all of its unspecified problems. Am I missing something, like known or unknown unknown?
- rcbdev 1y agoWhat exactly is your problem? You could just ask, if you're genuinely curious.
- rat9988 1y ago> Oh get the fuck out with that. Hey, learn how to have a nice discussion first then you can tell us about your morale compass.
- stavros 1y agoVote?
- greffel 1y ago[flagged]
- antisthenes 1y agoI would imagine the HN demographic pays quite a bit in taxes, both state and federal. One would think that in 2025, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, we could at least solve food insecurity.
- ryandrake 1y agoWe're not going to solve food insecurity when one major political party thinks it's kind of a problem but not big enough to actually do something about, and the other major political party is doing whatever they can policy-wise to increase food insecurity.
- mmooss 1y ago> I would imagine the HN demographic pays quite a bit in taxes, both state and federal. If they are in the U.S. and wealthy, they pay relatively little. That's why the U.S. has a problem funding these things.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- janwl 1y agoHe hopes for what benefits him. Would you rather see him lie and say he hopes people wouldn’t use his platform to pay for groceries?
- newsclues 1y agoThe communication strategy should be to publicly hope for a thriving economy so people aren’t relying on the services for groceries but he is proud and thankful that GoFundme is there to help out in these difficult times…
- nakedrobot2 1y agoActually yes, exactly this. What he is saying is really disgusting.
- mistrial9 1y agoyour framing of the question needlessly removes other possibilities.. a benefit of independent companies in an economy is that some can be machiavellian bean-counters, others can be born-again bleeding hearts, and they can make business decisions from either point of view, or many others. cynicism is a pernicious emotional illness IMHO
- masklinn 1y agoHe already did that back in 2021: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/02/11/gofundme-ceo-congress-pass-covid-relief-desperate-americans-column/4440425001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/02/11/gofu... He might have given up on the country at this point.
- digitalengineer 1y agoJust... wow... Thanks for the link. He did indeed! 2021 "The situation is nothing short of a national emergency. Congress should treat it as such... " And it only got worse. I'm guessing he gave up...
- bigbadfeline 1y agoOr he might be switching sides, like every other tech and non-tech business? Trying not to blame the GOP-controlled Congress in this time of stomp-on-the-critics politics? What are the odds, knowing what business cares about first and foremost?
- andirk 1y agoCNBC told me the economy is doing great. My neighbor is borrowing money from me. My friend is borrowing money from me. GoFundMe is becoming more for basic needs. Everything is becoming more expensive often for no reason. According to every metric BUT stonks, the economy is holding on by a thread.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- greffel 1y ago[flagged]
- netsharc 1y agoNo reason? Was it Covid, or the Ukraine war? The pandemic ground the gears, there was government help but I wonder what after-effects the flood of liquidity had, did too many people end up in the Ponzi schemes (Gamespot, trading cards, Bitcoin et al)? The war caused energy prices to go crazy, Europe needed gas and was willing to pay a premium, and the laws of supply and demand meant the price went up for everyone. I used to live in a country where the government subsidized the price of oil (including petrol). When they needed to cut that subsidy, people knew the price of oil would go up, and that affected the price of everything else, my reasoning was because all the trucks transporting goods needed petrol, but it's probably because everything needs energy to accomplish..
- watwut 1y agoI dont think Covid or Russian invasion into Ukraine can explain price movements last two years. Covid happened years ago and Russian invasion started years ago.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>No reason? Was it Covid, or the Ukraine war? Covid virus didn't make you poor, it was the government's response to it of shutting down large parts of the economy(and not others) plus printing endless money and dumping it on the market(mostly on rich people/businesses running on debt) distorting the market and creating hyper-inflation that wiped out your savings and wages. Same with the war in Europe, they weren't forced to give up on cheap Russian gas that was the base of their economy, they voluntarily chose to do that to save Ukraine, with the obvious effect their prices would go up and standard of living would go down. People need to start holding their elected governments accountable for their actions of putting too many thumbs, arms and legs on the economic scales that cause wealth transfer form the poor to the rich under the pretext of every crisis("never waste a good crisis"), and for the "let the peasants eat cake" response they get in return.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- integricho 1y agoAt the same time millionairs and billionairs are doing just great.
- BartjeD 1y agoBuying gold and silver to get through the inevitable stock bubble pop is out of reach for normal people with normal wages and savings. Houses and stocks got cheaper per ounce of gold last 20 years. But in terms of dollars they got way more expensive... inflation has been robbing us for more than 2 decades.
- BirAdam 1y agoSince 1971. The world economic system became what I term financialism, where money is simply a debt instrument. The Treasury issues a debt note, in exchange for which they receive Fed Notes, and that debt obligation becomes the backing for more loans issued by the Fed to member banks. The Fed Notes handed to banks are then loaned too. Thus, debts in a single sector (if large enough) can crash the entire system. The issue is, things that are tied to debt will go up first: housing, cars, etc. Stock inflation occurs because inflation forces people to speculate to stay ahead of the inflation rate. To fix inflation when using a debt based currency, you’d need high interest rates (a high price of money), or you’d need the government to pay off debt which takes money out of circulation. Neither of these will happen as the politicians in power would cause serious short term pain. They all have an incentive to kick the can and hope the next guy is in power when it all falls apart. What we are seeing now is the result of the price of money having been lower than the inflation rate for over 20 years. Effectively free money. This subtly skews the perception of risk, and therefore increases dollar velocity and drives inflation even higher.
- imtringued 1y agoI disagree with the statement that politicians are averse to short term pain or even long term pain. Trump certainly doesn't seem to mind. Pain doesn't buy anything, by the way.
- onetokeoverthe 1y ago[dead]
- kpmcc 1y agoThere is a method for dealing with widespread inequality coinciding with generational wealth transfer, it’s called taxation. Tax transfers of wealth. It’s not complicated and doesn’t rely on the goodwill of ‘values-driven, digitally native, and community oriented’ young people. We have a system designed to incentivize greed. Gross inequality is the result. Taxation is one viable method to deal with such a failure mode.
- aborsy 1y agoThis method has problems too. There are more beggars in EU than in other countries in my experience, overall is not doing well.
- lenkite 1y ago> There are more beggars in EU than in other countries in my experience, Are there really more beggars and homeless in the EU compared to the US ? Admittedly, my anecdotal viewpoint is only that of a visitor, but having been to both, it seemed US cities had a far more severe problem. The first time it was a bit of a shock to me - the US had this patina of glory that crumbled for me after my first visit.
- rsynnott 1y agoThere's a question of what 'homelessness' means, there. So to take an example, Dublin counts 11,000 people as homeless, with ~120 sleeping rough. SF, a somewhat bigger city, but in the same size range, counts 8,000 people homeless... but with over 4000 sleeping rough. This is both a difference in temporary/emergency accommodation available, and a difference in definition (for instance I don't think SF counts couch surfing as homeless).
- neuronic 1y agoUh yea, thats because we tax everyone to hell EXCEPT the rich. Wealth inequality is a serious problem and we are moving to catastrophe sooner rather than later on the current path. It's obvious why the ultra-rich are building bunkers and hide-outs. Those are of course scams by the building companies, as they give a false sense of security, but the idea of what is REALLY going on is obviously out there.
- peter-m80 1y agoCapitalism
- nxm 1y agoStill better than the alternatives
- BartjeD 1y agoDoing Capitalism better means preventing market failures and accepting more state intervention... which i suppose the trump / republican government is doing. Free market Capitalism is dead in the USA, winners are getting picked. Coal over solar. Who knows, perhaps it's right, but I suspect not.
- A_D_E_P_T 1y agoIn all seriousness, and I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but at this point the Chinese do capitalism better than the US: - Lots of small and mid-sized firms. - Lots of cutthroat competition with resulting price pressure. - Virtually all firms are subsidized by direct government investment to some extent, but the government doesn't pick winners. - Red tape and barriers to entry are generally low, regulation mostly affects larger firms. (The CCP doesn't want companies getting too big for their britches, but there are too many small firms to harass, and the government doesn't want people unemployed.) - Civil legal liability is anywhere from 10x to 1000x less of an issue. I'm not exaggerating. The courts are fast, decisions are usually reasonable, and "access to justice" costs very little. In the US you have this scheme where barriers to entry are insanely high thanks to regulatory capture, and the courts are a weapon that large firms use against small ones, almost exclusively, as smaller companies can't afford the costs associated with litigation. This is without even getting into "winners getting picked," which is obviously a problem.
- potato3732842 1y agoThis. All this. And it's not some law of reality or the goodness of the CCP or some raced based bullshit that underpins is. The US was like this too, 75yr ago. But for several generations we've been throwing more power behind both public and private institutions that reduce the tempo of economic activity and it sure fucking shows.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- HPsquared 1y agoRent is too damn high.
- fzeroracer 1y agoBy most metrics we're in a recession as many of our state economies are crashing due to the psychotic tariff policy and economic decisions by the current admin. Some places are temporarily avoiding the fallout because the ramifications of breaking our ability to manufacture and import stuff is going to take months to fully hit and the rest of our economy is propped up by AI psychosis. With the job market being the shittiest I've seen and more ladders being kicked out than ever I think this crash will end up being possibly one of the most violent ones. We might see a return to the early 1900s era of union vs corporate violence as corporations have gotten more brazen than ever to try and stop any sort of concerted effort by labor.