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America Needs a Mass Movement—Now | Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.
(www.theatlantic.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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Hey sorry for the belated reply. Please note that I didn’t downvote you.
I suppose first we have to clear up the meaning of ´tanking’ the economy, for me it means long term damage that takes time to recover, if recoverable in the first place. Of course, a general strike will not be a net positive in itself.
However, let’s not forget that, if met, the demands of the strikers, could potentially be beneficial to the economy. (They could also be detrimental of course). But we have to consider the overall effect, and that is a lot more complex than just considering « oh no people are not going to be working for days or weeks ».
I’m not sure you believe that leaving the Trump admin free rein is actually beneficial to the economy…
Besides the thing about striking is that people don’t get paid, so companies might not be making money, but their losses won’t be so great, especially in a high income country such as the us where salaries are not dirt cheap. Most of the remaining expenses would be : rent, loans if applicable and any materials or product that has to be consumed in a given time frame, and goes bad unused because of the strike. The latter is the only real loss to the economy, as it is literally wasting stuff. Loans can be renegotiated and rent can be spread out. Not that this can’t have adverse effects… of course people are going to loose money - that’s kind of the whole point. Profits will probably take a hit (ohno, extremely rich people are going to enrich themselves slightly less for a while, what a terrible thing !!)
If ever a company goes under because of a strike, this leaves room for a new one to take its place (or an existing company to expand), especially in an economy as flexible as the US. So it might be bad in the short term for some people, but failures such as these can be recovered from quickly.
But anyways, the thing is with strikes is that the people in charge ALWAYS give in before serious damage is done. Nobody is going to leave their company go bankrupt because workers are striking, just like nobody is going to strike until they starve to death (hunger strikes set aside which are a whole different thing and not what we are discussing).
Of course a nationwide strike is a different business, but if it goes on to a point where many companies are going to go under, it means that many important people are loosing money. They will put pressure to resolve the crisis and will do so before irreversible damage is done because it is in their fucking interest to do so and most of these people care about money first.
Anyways, they have been many strikes, general or not, throughout the world and throughout history, I challenge you to find one example where these have caused irreversible damage to the economy.
The fact is they damage from strikes is extremely short term and is always recovered from quickly, because only fanatics would have it otherwise. They might be a lot of fanatics at the head of the US atm, but they need the support of a lot of people who will always favor their profits and business over everything else.