Happy Labor Day? Inflation is eating up our paychecks!

Usually around Labor Day weekend, unofficially the end of summer vacation season, travel costs begin to drop.

Not this year. The price of gasoline remains high, up 30% over this time last year. Rising fuel costs have also impacted airfares, up 39% over the same period. Diesel fuel costs have hit record highs. The illegal, unpopular U.S. war against Iran is a factor affecting the cost of transportation. In fact, rising oil prices, passed on to consumers by profit-driven capitalists, are impacting the cost of everything, from food to utilities to medicine to getting to work and back — i.e., the necessities of life.

This war-related inflation is on top of prices that were already skyrocketing even before this latest act of imperialist aggression.

While oil companies’ profits are rising, life for working-class and oppressed people is a never-ending crisis. High prices are compounded by unemployment, underemployment, stagnant or falling wages, union busting, white supremacy and other forms of bigotry, weather-related losses to which the climate catastrophe is a contributor and more.  So many people, especially those facing special oppression of one kind or another, are living paycheck to paycheck. An unexpected event, such as a tornado or a power outage, can push a worker over the edge — financially and psychologically.

And now artificial intelligence (AI), the latest technological weapon in the bosses’ war against the working class, threatens to wipe out untold numbers of jobs, raise the costs of electricity and water and subject those still working to surveillance in the workplace. Millions of Black and Brown workers face state terror through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that are splitting families and communities apart.

As Workers World Party’s First Secretary Larry Holmes wrote in “A perfect storm is coming – World capitalist economic crisis today,” published on Sept. 1: “The arrival of AI — which under socialism, could liberate society from many forms of labor and raise both the living standards and social equality for the world’s population — under capitalism is a lethal threat to workers everywhere. … Until capitalism is overthrown, AI will only compound the other overlapping crises that will make life unbearable for most people.” (workers.org/2026/09/94553/) Holmes adds: “And of course, no worker will be safe from the impact of the storm. It’s coming after jobs, homes, pensions, savings, even Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. For the mass of the working class, the basic necessities of life will be unavailable.”

None of these crises facing workers and oppressed people — now and even more so when the storm really hits — will be solved by simply electing a more “progressive” politician. To do that we have to overthrow the capitalist system once and for all.