Bernie Sanders has sounded an alarm over the US economy, warning “the worst is yet to come” unless workers overcome a “ruling class” of billionaires.
The US senator spoke at a rally in Manhattan on Sunday alongside Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, who cautioned that artificial intelligence was “coming for human jobs” amid mounting concern over the technology’s rapid development.
As the pair headlined the launch of Union Now, a new drive to boost labor unions across the US, Sanders issued a bleak assessment of the consequences if workers fail to organize against billionaires like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Jeff Bezos, executive chair of Amazon; and Donald Trump, the US president.
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” he declared, citing pushes from billionaires like Musk to invest in robotics and AI to replace workers, and Bezos, who recently announced an effort to raise $100bn to buy and automate manufacturing companies.
“When we talk about the importance of taking on the crisis of income inequality, we know that the most effective tool to do so is increasing union density,” said Mamdani. “Organizing drives and strikes can, frankly, be lonely work. So Union Now is going to support workers and provide them with more resources, and my administration will stand right alongside them. This moment demands nothing less.
“AI and robots are coming for human jobs. Worker protections are being eroded. There are companies that think that exploitation is a viable business model. They are wrong.”
Sanders argued that the US working and middle classes are facing an existential crisis at the whims of Trump and other billionaires. “It’s absolutely important that all of us here and every American understand that in the ruling class of this country today, there is an extraordinary level of arrogance and cruelty,” he said. “In many ways, these guys believe like the monarchs. I’m not exaggerating, like the monarchs of the 19th century. They believe that they have the divine right to rule.”
Musk owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of all Americans, Sanders said, and in 2025 alone 938 US-based billionaires saw their net worths increase by $1.5tn.
“The truth is that the 1% the people on top, people running this country have never, ever had it so good,” he told the crowd. “But the sad reality is that for these people, all that they have is not good enough. They want more and more and more, and they don’t care who they step on to get what they want.
“These guys are extremely, extremely greedy people, and they could care less in terms of what happens to our children, what happens to our parents and our grandparents, and what happens to our environment today.”
“One of the goals of the oligarchs and the media that they own is to make ordinary people feel that there is nothing that they can do to shape the future,” continued Sanders. “And what we are here today to say to Mr Musk and his friends: go to hell.”
Sanders cited Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election last year as an example of people coming together to defeat the efforts of billionaires and ultra wealthy, who vehemently opposed Mamdani’s candidacy.
“Their nightmare is not just what happens in New York City, it is the fear that working people all over our country will do exactly the same,” he said. “That instead of hating each other because of the language we speak or where we were born, we’re going to stand together and fight for a government that represents all of us.”
The time has come for the US trade union movement to be rebuilt, said Sanders, along with the political system, ending the influence of super political action committees. The Democratic Party must become a party of the working class, he argued.
The rally also included appearances from workers involved in some of the most high-profile union organizing efforts in the US over the past several years that have faced staunch employer opposition, including workers at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, Delta Air Lines, and Wells Fargo.
“If Trump and his fellow oligarchs get their way, we will be living in a society where fewer and fewer people have more and more wealth and more and more power, where democracy will be undermined, where workers will be thrown out on the street with no recourse,” concluded Sanders. “That is not the America we want for ourselves or for our kids.
“The good news is, if we stand together and we not let Trump and his friends divide us up, when we stand together and fight for a government that works for all of us, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.”
