The crowdfunding site said in its annual report that people increasingly sought help with “essential expenses” like housing costs as inflation continues to bedevil Americans.
Why would this sort of fundraising quadruple from 2023 to 2024 when the big spike in prices due to inflation happened in 2001 and 2002? 2024 isn’t so dramatically worse than 2023 by any metric.
The article does state that
price growth actually spiked again in November, indicating that efforts to combat increasing day-to-day expenses for American households has stalled
but this corresponds to things not getting better as opposed to things getting worse.
I suspect that part of the explanation involves GoFundMe becoming more popular (maybe in general or maybe just with people fundraising for essentials) rather than any larger economic trend. The article doesn’t include enough information to know.
Absurd levels of wealth disparity, beyond anything in recorded human history, breaking society and making a whole bunch of generally useful metrics now basically meaningless.
Consumer debt levels skyrocketing.
Housing/Rental prices still rising.
Average college costs / debt still rising.
Job growth isn’t keeping up with population growth.
(Even after recovering from Covid, the Employment to Population ratio is still lower than what it was from 04 to 08. Its only 1% higher right now than it was at its lowest from the 08 crash, and its been headed downward since 23.)
Trying to get a decent job without nepotism/networking is 5x harder than working a decent job due to completely insane requirements and ghost jobs… and nepotism.
And real median income is basically flat since 2020, not rising by much at all.
…
Your headline econ inflation stat does a neat job of not really reflecting the reality of what a common person’s budget looks like.
Why would this sort of fundraising quadruple from 2023 to 2024 when the big spike in prices due to inflation happened in 2001 and 2002? 2024 isn’t so dramatically worse than 2023 by any metric.
The article does state that
but this corresponds to things not getting better as opposed to things getting worse.
I suspect that part of the explanation involves GoFundMe becoming more popular (maybe in general or maybe just with people fundraising for essentials) rather than any larger economic trend. The article doesn’t include enough information to know.
Shits been bad for a long time this is just the covid savings buffer drying up.
Absurd levels of wealth disparity, beyond anything in recorded human history, breaking society and making a whole bunch of generally useful metrics now basically meaningless.
Consumer debt levels skyrocketing.
Housing/Rental prices still rising.
Average college costs / debt still rising.
Job growth isn’t keeping up with population growth.
(Even after recovering from Covid, the Employment to Population ratio is still lower than what it was from 04 to 08. Its only 1% higher right now than it was at its lowest from the 08 crash, and its been headed downward since 23.)
Trying to get a decent job without nepotism/networking is 5x harder than working a decent job due to completely insane requirements and ghost jobs… and nepotism.
And real median income is basically flat since 2020, not rising by much at all.
…
Your headline econ inflation stat does a neat job of not really reflecting the reality of what a common person’s budget looks like.
I personally doubt that GoFundMe is 4x more popular today than it was just 2 years ago