Have you ever heard of a debt strike?
You know what a strike is… where workers refuse to work until their demands are met.
A debt strike is like that but instead of withholding our labor we withhold our money.
Imagine a large apartment building owned by a slumlord. The building is falling apart, the heat is not working, the roof is leaking, broken things never get fixed. And yet, tenants are expected to pay their rent every month on time. Now imagine that the tenants all got together and went on a rent strike, refusing to pay until their landlord fixed these problems. Because the landlord depends on those rent checks, they would have a huge incentive to listen to demands and do what the renters want.
Now imagine scaling that idea up nationwide.
The American public held about $18.8 trillion in consumer debt at the end of 2025.
There’s a famous quote by J. Paul Getty, an oil baron who was once the richest man on earth. He said “If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”
That $18.8 trillion, over $150,000 per US household, is actually huge leverage we hold over our economy.
As David Faris wrote in Newsweek: “The country’s banking system depends on the timely payment of mortgages, auto loans, and student loans, and even a brief interruption of the flow of cash… would cause a political crisis. Neither banks nor the federal government have anything remotely approaching the institutional capacity to crack down on a scaled-up debt strike.”
Geez, I guess we had better be careful! Remember, banks can’t operate without our debt payments. It sure would be a shame if everyone suddenly decided to withhold monthly credit card payments or student loan payments. It could crash the economy! It could put banks out of business! It’s almost like the people we pay money to every month would be forced to negotiate or risk destruction.
With huge leverage like that the public could make any demands it wanted… forgiveness of debts, universal healthcare, public bank ownership, possibly even a new constitution.
Debt strikes are so powerful - and so easy to participate in. Like, it’s way easier to NOT pay your credit card bill.
I wonder if Americans could do a debt strike with their taxes? (No question.)
Coordination is the most important part. You don’t want to be the only one on a debt strike because then it’s easy for the system to find and punish you. The more people participate, the harder that becomes. They can’t put us all in jail.
The website Beautiful Trouble puts it this way: “Coordination is key. We can’t act in isolation, exposing ourselves to retaliation and division. Instead, participants should all sign a pledge — either public or confidential — to stop paying certain bills. When enough people sign up to provide real leverage, strike. In the meantime, organize furiously, publicize a running total, aggregate grievances, collect outrageous debt stories, and watch the financial élite panic.”
Debt Collective is collecting signatures to end student debt. That’s certainly worth checking out. There’s also Strike Debt, a decentralized network of debt resistors and activists fighting for economic justice. They have a free operations manual on how to start resisting.
Now think for a moment how powerful it could be to combine a debt strike with a general strike.
Isn’t it funny that we have these amazing tools for resistance but almost nobody knows about them? We should change that. Spread the word.
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Let’s make them pay.
Dear Reader, this is just a quick note to say thank you for taking the time to visit my Substack. I am just an ordinary working stiff like you, hoping to get closer to retirement before my industry dries up and blows away entirely. That’s a colorful way of saying that I write here in my spare time. If you enjoy my writing and would like to see more of it, please sign up for a paid subscription. It would be a blessing to leave the 40 hour grind and do this full time. Every dollar you give me is a thumb in the eye of the powerful. Let’s start gouging their eyeballs good, and as always, let’s make them pay…
