You're assuming his fixed expenses are exactly what they were a decade or even a year ago. People have obligations. Houses, cars, insurance, loan payments, all of that. Reasonable expenses at the time of acquisition based on the reasonable expected income.

You can't assume someone can have their income reduced by 100% for a month, then maybe get ten percent of that back without issues. He's got bills to pay. This is his full time job.

It's not $100. It can be, but ad free, alone, is $20.

I understand the confusion, but it's not $100. Or need not be.

While I agree that the price is a bit steep, there's also the fact that the userbase for Lemmy is much smaller than what it was for Reddit. To make a reasonable amount of money (in the dev's opinion), they need a higher price to compensate for the lower sales. Of course, that higher price may discourage people from laying for it at all, causing their income to be too low.

I'm still using Jerboa myself, but checking out alternatives as well. I still don't know whether Sync is worth it for me at this price.