On the backs of
Today’s expression is “on the backs of.” And we use this when someone achieves something as a result of the effort, labor, or sacrifice of someone else. So one person is doing the hard work, making a sacrifice, but someone else is benefiting.
And it’s not always true, but there’s often a sense of exploitation. There’s often a sense of someone getting cheated.
Did you know that it’s very common for sports stadiums in America to be built at least in part with taxpayer dollars? Oh yes, it is. Here’s what happens. A billionaire sports team owner muses out loud that he might have to move the team to another city. The stadium is just too old. He doesn’t want to move the team, oh no. But there’s no way he can keep his team in such an old and decrepit stadium.
Panic ensues. People lament: Our city is going to lose our beloved baseball-football-basketball-or-hockey team! What can we do? The team is our identity! We’re nothing without them! Then the state legislature or the city council decides to step in and pay for a portion of a new stadium.
Not everyone supports public money being spent so that a private business—a sports team—can have fancy digs. So some people say: “We shouldn’t be building a luxurious new stadium on the backs of the local taxpayers.”
What they’re saying is, a very rich team owner benefits from the sacrifice of the local taxpayers. The local taxpayers pay, in part, for a stadium. They don’t get to go to the games for free! The team owner charges high prices to go to the games. The team owner gets the benefit. The local taxpayers are the ones who sacrifice. The team owner gets a new stadium on the backs of local taxpayers. That, at least, is the objection.
In today’s story about child influencers , I said that some parents of YouTube stars live lavish lifestyles on the backs of their kids’ appearances. Not all! This is not true of everyone. However, if you look hard enough, you’ll find popular YouTube channels that feature children. And you’ll see some of those channels make big, big money. And some of the parents who are behind the cameras live lavish lifestyles on the backs of their children’s appearances.
That means, the children are the ones in the videos, the parents get the money. Sure, the parents work. The children aren’t setting the business strategy. But the children’s appearances in the video are what generate the money that the parents then…sorry to say, but they keep the money for themselves. Again, not everyone! But it happens.
One child influencer told the story about how she confessed to her parents that she didn’t want to record videos anymore. And her parents turned it right back on her and said, “Fine, you don’t want to do any more videos? Now we have to sell our house.” This is what I mean by parents living a lavish lifestyle on the backs of their children’s videos.
Here’s an example that’s not about exploitation. We talked in Lesson 527 about the railway workers in Ukraine who helped shuttle people out of the country and, at the same time, they got supplies to the front line. So you can say that army was supplied on the backs of the railway workers. That means, the army enjoyed the benefit of having supplies delivered—and the people who did that were the railway workers.
See you next time!
And that brings us to the end of Plain English for today, October 12, 2023. Thanks for making Plain English part of your English language journey. If you’re listening on Spotify, please, please take just a few seconds to give us a rating—any rating you like. But the more ratings we get, the more people will discover us in the app.
We’ll be back on Monday with a new topic. See you then.
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