Live data from Hacker News

GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

finance.yahoo.com

51–60 of 116 posts

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#51
post #33

“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.

He 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?

The 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…

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#53
post #4

CNBC 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.

I wonder who will be blamed for the reckless spending that resulted in this inflation.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#54
post #37
post #20

There 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 mod…

This method has problems too. There are more beggars in EU than in other countries in my experience, overall is not doing well.

Uh 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.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#55
post #4

CNBC 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.

> Everything is becoming more expensive often for no reason.

- For food, this was caused by supply shocks. First COVID, then Ukraine, now tariffs and the trade war. And on top of that, excessive price-setting power in some highly concentrated sectors of the food industry.

- For housing, this was caused by a supply shortage, i.e. bad housing policy. A housing shortage gives property owners price-setting power, which allows them to keep raising the price. However, while we've made it very easy for owners to profit, we've made it harder for developers, feeding the shortage.

- For healthcare, we decided to let many middle-men profit. A decent portion of spending could be cut without harming pharmaceutical innovation or new drug development.

These problems all have causes, and the cause is bad policy that benefits a minority while harming the country. And "tax the rich and give to the poor" does not fix these; the government is gonna need to get involved in directly fixing these broken markets, not just giving money to the poor so they immediately hand it over to the existing rent-seekers.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#56
post #46
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better than the alternatives

Doing 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.

In 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.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#57
post #33

“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.

He 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?

Actually yes, exactly this. What he is saying is really disgusting.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#58
post #43
post #20

There 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 mod…

[flagged]

Do you consider all taxes to be theft?

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#59
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This method has problems too. There are more beggars in EU than in other countries in my experience, overall is not doing well.

Uh 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.

* Wealth inequality in US is clearly a big problem. But it’s typically not a big problem in the rest of the world, certainly in EU.

* If you think taxes and donations will solve the problem with people who struggle with basics, you are wrong. Again look at the world, places like France.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries

#60
post #4

CNBC 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.

The open not-secret has been, post-GFC and especially post-COVID, k-shaped recoveries and increasingly k-shaped economy. So it is both the best of times and the worst of times. Neither party has been remotely serious about trying to structurally fix this, which would be immensely painful to those with the most wealth and power and political influence.

We're also now fairly openly in a 21st century "Great Game" if not multipolar Thucydides Trap including ongoing proxy war, so deflationary impulses from the Eurasia to the west in energy, goods and labor have been partially choked off in various ways, leaving the working class with the double whammy of energy/goods/services inflation along with the preexisting asset price inflation.

Post reply on HN