Americans are working two and three jobs just to stay afloat, and the press is calling it "entrepreneurship."
TechStartups.com ran a piece this week celebrating "side hustles" as a smart, risk-reducing path to business ownership, citing Academy of Management Journal research finding that founders who keep their day jobs are 33% less likely to fail than those who go all-in. The article frames the side hustle as validation before launch, earn before you scale — a pragmatic strategy for aspiring founders. What it buries: the reason millions of people need that second income in the first place.
The Denver Post, in an opinion piece advocating for Colorado's Amendment 87, reported the reality on the ground. Small business owners say everything is too expensive. Healthcare costs are "out of control." Colorado's small-group market is bracing for an average 14% premium hike next year. Half the state lives in a childcare desert. Small Business Majority research found that 56% of entrepreneurs lost substantial time from their businesses due to childcare struggles, 39% lost business opportunities, and 26% had to shut down entirely and go work for someone else. Nearly half of small businesses say employees adjust schedules monthly over childcare; 30% say workers have quit over shortages.
Previously successful companies are failing, and their owners are looking to sell, The Denver Post reported. That's not a hustle. That's a system breaking down.
So who benefits from rebranding economic desperation as "hustle culture"? The platforms that take a cut of every gig transaction. The policymakers who'd rather celebrate "entrepreneurship" than answer for why a single job no longer covers rent. The consultants and think tanks pushing startup mythology while the small businesses that actually employ Americans get crushed by healthcare costs, childcare collapse, and inflation.
The Denver Post's solution is Amendment 87, which would move Colorado from a flat income tax to a graduated one, with revenue earmarked for childcare, K-12 education, and healthcare. The piece claims 97% of taxpayers — including most small businesses — would pay less. Maybe. But the same article notes Colorado is staring down a $1 billion budget deficit and that H.R. 1, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," already cut Medicaid funding and deeper cuts are on the table. When both parties agree to spend and both parties agree to cut the programs that spending was supposed to fund, the public gets sold out twice.
TechStartups framed the side hustle as a launchpad. The Denver Post framed it as a symptom. The truth is that when a nation's workers need multiple income streams to survive, and its small business owners are one childcare emergency away from closing up shop, the problem isn't a lack of hustle. It's a failure of the people in charge.
The open question: how long before Americans stop calling it opportunity and start calling it what it is?
