Uber and similar employers demonstrate the axiom that businesses will always pay workers as little as they can get away with.

They’re using creative arguments to keep drivers classified as independent contractors so they can evade their responsibilities and pawn them off on taxpayers.

This is little different from the mineral companies that make their shareholders a fortune, then intentionally go bankrupt and stick taxpayers with strip-mining cleanup bills.

Uber knows, just like strip miners know, that if you can find a way to make the taxpayer shoulder some of your cost of doing business you make more profit.

In this case, it’s workers who get shafted, and that’s a story as old as American industry.

I have a suggestion for the Uber executives who want to argue that drivers are merely side hustlers. If that’s the case, then structure the app to allow drivers to only log in for 10 hours a week.

Anything beyond that is clearly not a side hustle. Unless Uber executives consider that Americans want to work ridiculous hours for little pay just to survive.