Why General Strikes Won’t Save Us (But Buyer’s Strikes Might)

I keep seeing calls for a general strike to bring down the Trump regime. The sentiment is right. The strategy is wrong.

I understand the appeal. It’s delicious to imagine millions of Americans simultaneously refusing to work, bringing the economy to a halt, forcing the regime to its knees. It’s a beautiful vision. It’s also a fantasy - at least in the United States in 2025.

Not because Americans lack courage. Not because we don’t care enough. But because the basic structure of American capitalism makes general strikes nearly impossible to execute, and by the time conditions exist where they’d be possible, they’re already irrelevant.

Let me explain using my own situation.

The Perfect Candidate Who Won’t Strike

I’m about as well-positioned for a general strike as any American worker could be. I’m a union member with job protection - I can’t be fired without cause. I have significant savings. My house is paid off. And I’m ideologically committed enough that I just wore a frog hat to a protest with 12,000 people.

My odds of participating in a general strike? Zero.

Not zero as hyperbole. Zero as an actual number.

Why? Because I’m two years from retirement, and my health insurance is completely tied to my ongoing employment. If I participate in a general strike, I risk my job, my pension benefits, and my health insurance. I’m reasonably healthy for an American male nearing sixty (which is to say, a lifetime of hard work and cheeseburgers hasn’t killed me yet.) But My Lady Wife is a cancer survivor. Going without health insurance is dangerous at any age. Past fifty, it’s all but suicidal. So, it’s a roll of the dice. The much-vaunted general strike means we can hope for a win for democracy, but I risk everything I’ve worked thirty years to secure. Even that paid-for home is contingent on paying the property tax each and every year.

The rational calculation is simple: participate and lose everything, or wait two years, retire with full benefits, and then do whatever activism I want without destroying my family’s financial security.

If I won’t do it - and I’m arguably one of the best-positioned workers in America - who will?

The System Is Designed to Prevent This

The United States is structurally built to make general strikes nearly impossible. Start with healthcare tied to employment - that’s the killer. Lose your job, lose your insurance. For people with chronic conditions, families with kids, anyone over 50, this isn’t just inconvenient. It’s potentially life-threatening. You’re not just asking people to risk their paycheck. You’re asking them to risk their ability to get insulin, cancer treatment, their child’s asthma medication. European general strikes work partly because healthcare is universal. Workers can strike without literally risking death. Here in the ‘Land of the Free?’ Not so much.

Then there’s at-will employment. Most Americans can be fired without cause, which means strike equals automatic termination for the majority of workers. Most states have no European-style labor protections. No legal recourse. And for vast swathes of our American workforce? They don’t dare miss even one paycheck. You might face eviction, car repossession, utility shutoffs, food insecurity. There’s no universal basic income, minimal unemployment benefits. The system is designed to make missing a single paycheck catastrophic.

Add in that only about 10% of US workers are unionized, so we lack the coordinated labor power and organizational infrastructure that general strikes require. The Taft-Hartley Act makes sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts illegal, so a true general strike exists in a legal gray area at best. And try coordinating millions of workers across a continent-sized country - it’s exponentially harder than in the smaller European nations where general strikes have historically succeeded.

The Catch-22

Here’s the real problem: a general strike is impossible when it would matter, and irrelevant when it becomes possible.

When the economy is functional enough that a strike could actually pressure the regime, people have too much to lose and can’t afford to participate. When people finally have nothing left to lose, well, at that point nobody’s working anyway. You’re not organizing a strike - you’re just describing mass unemployment during an economic collapse.

The Alternative That’s Already Working

But there’s another kind of strike happening right now. One that doesn’t require you to quit your job, risk your healthcare, or coordinate with millions of strangers. It’s called a buyer’s strike, and it’s devastatingly effective.

Here’s my personal example. Last October, my wife and I were scheduled for a solar panel system upgrade with battery storage. The roof turned out to need replacement, turning a $20,000 job into $40,000. We said fine, we need the roof. They put it on in late October and scheduled the panels and batteries for two weeks later.

Then November 5th happened. Election night. Trump won.

My wife and I looked at each other and both said the same thing: “Oh HELL no.”

We paid a $900 cancellation fee, paid off the roofers, and walked away from $20,000 worth of solar panels and batteries. Not because we couldn’t afford it - we had the cash, the project was already half-done. But the moment Trump won, we both knew everything just got riskier. Time to pull back, conserve resources, hunker down.

That’s $20,000 in economic activity that evaporated overnight. One decision. One household. But multiply that by millions.

Why This Actually Works

A buyer’s strike has every advantage a general strike lacks. You cannot be fired for not buying stuff. You cannot be arrested. You cannot be punished. You don’t need a union, don’t need an organization, don’t need millions of strangers to agree on timing. You just stop spending. Keep your job, keep your healthcare, keep your income - just redirect your spending toward paying down debt and building emergency funds instead of discretionary purchases.

And here’s the beautiful part: it’s already happening organically. When economic conditions deteriorate, people naturally pull back spending. The buyer’s strike just leverages that natural behavior and amplifies it through conscious choice. As more people pull back, economic contraction accelerates, which makes more people pull back, which accelerates contraction further. It’s a positive feedback loop working against the regime.

Best of all? They can’t stop it. How do you force someone to buy something? You can’t. You can try to stimulate demand, but if consumers collectively decide “we’re not spending,” there’s no lever to pull.

The Math Matters

Consumer spending drives 70% of US GDP. When millions of households simultaneously cancel home renovations, postpone car purchases, skip vacations, freeze hiring at small businesses, and eliminate every discretionary purchase, the economic impact is immediate and devastating. And it doesn’t require anyone to quit their job or risk their healthcare.

According to a recent Forbes article, mortgage delinquencies are already spiking. Early delinquencies are rising faster than any other type of consumer credit. The author describes it as “behavioral collapse” - the US consumer isn’t just stretched anymore, they’re “snapping.”

This isn’t even policy failure yet. This is just people looking at the Trump regime and deciding to pull back, conserve resources, prepare for disaster. My $20,000 solar cancellation on November 6th? I wasn’t alone. Every solar company in America probably saw cancellations that week. Every home remodeler, every car dealership, every discretionary purchase business. Just a wave of “oh HELL no” sweeping across the economy.

That was November 2024, before inauguration, before tariffs, before any actual policy damage. Just the expectation of Trump chaos was enough to trigger mass pullback. Now it’s October 2025, and the mortgage default data confirms what we already knew: the economic collapse is underway.

What You Can Actually Do

If you want to resist the regime economically, you don’t need to quit your job. Simply stop all discretionary spending - no new car, no vacation, no home renovation, no luxury purchases. Make coffee at home. (I can still make my own pumpkin spice latte for pennies on the dollar, even after the coffee tariffs.) Build emergency reserves with every dollar you don’t spend. Pay down debt to reduce your vulnerability to economic shocks. Spend on support necessities only: food, housing, healthcare, utilities. Everything else is optional.

And when friends ask why you’re not buying something or doing something, be honest: “We’re preparing for economic disaster under Trump.”

This isn’t sacrifice. This is smart financial planning during obviously dangerous times. When millions do it simultaneously, it’s also resistance.

They Need Your Money

Trump’s economy depends on consumer confidence and spending. When consumers collectively decide “we’re not playing anymore,” the whole house of cards falls down. The regime and the oligarchs can survive protests. They can survive criticism. They cannot survive economic collapse.

The general strike won’t work because the system is designed to prevent it. The buyer’s strike is already working because the system can’t stop it.

So by all means, keep your job. Keep your healthcare. Pay your mortgage. Just stop spending money on anything you don’t absolutely need.

It’s not as dramatic as walking off the job. But it’s far more effective. And unlike a general strike, you can start today, right now, no coordination required, no risk involved.

The revolution will be financially responsible.

Ribbet

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