GoFundMe Used to Be For Crises. Now It's For 'Essential Expenses'

[appalachiablue]

Daily Kos, Dec. 21, 2024.

One of the largest crowdfunding websites saw a steep increase this year in people fundraising for basic necessities, like food and housing. GoFundMe reports that campaigns for “essential expenses” have quadrupled since 2023. The reasons for this are clear: inflation’s lingering effects on household goods and food, coupled with rising housing costs.

GoFundMe’s report highlighted housing, citing the success of a campaign to rehouse one family that had been evicted from their Los Angeles home after living there for more than three decades. According to reports, Gustavo and Ana Martinez were shocked when their landlord served them a 60-day notice to vacate the premises. Reportedly, the landlord wanted to move her son into the apartment.

GoFundMe has also marked how morally bereft our health care system is, becoming the fundraiser du jour for Americans unable to afford care.

Unfortunately, instead of combating costs, Donald Trump’s Republican Party is planning to levy strict tariffs on countries whose goods the U.S. relies on. Experts are nearly unanimous in finding that Trump’s tariffs would raise prices on essentials. Worse, Trump often seems not to understand what groceries even are.

All this comes while the GOP’s billionaire class pushes for more spending cuts to social safety nets. Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk, along with tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy, plan to use their advisory commission, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, to promote the kind of austerity policies that even Musk admits would wreck the economy...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/21/2292637/-GoFundMe-used-to-be-for-crises-Now-it-s-for-essential-expenses

[CousinIT]

1. But the billionaires....

...get richer and richer and don't have to pay taxes, so that's OK. Right, MAGA voters?

[appalachiablue]

2. The sickening reality. Maga is locked into the madness.

[Initech]

5. Take Starbucks for example.

They just hired a CEO who makes $113 million a year. ONE GUY. ONE. Makes that much fucking money.

The rest of us get $7.25 an hour.

Make it make sense.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. For profit health is the product of entrepreneurial capitalism

Dangle the big carrot and many PhD's and MD's will work hard to develop new medicines, and it is expensive. Back in the Benjamin Salk days, no such pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Now most everything is profit driven. Hospitals, clinics. We've not found a way as a society to cap profits in health care anymore than any other industry. We worship the Magnificent Seven. If you're going to cap health care costs, someone is taking a pay cut. Doctors? Hospitals? Health care real estate? Equipment manufacturers? I don't think we root out waste much either but that's another story.

[appalachiablue]

4. Vy well said, tx, the Gold Rush. I don't know how long this toxic system can continue..

Look at the damage and costs. We know several young people who aren't out of their 20s yet and already have one or two chronic illnesses, colitis and cancer. They're dependent on health care through their employer for now and heaven help them if the situation changes.