Skin In The Gane

[Doug Harris]

>From today's LA Times, in an article re the shrinking number of people
paying US income tax:

"Many people would think if you are a citizen, you ought to have skin in the
game, and we have more and more people with no skin in the game," said Scott
Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, conservative-leaning
research group. "From a social perspective, we ought to be concerned about
that."

I am not really interested in sports, and I make no attempt to keep current
on sports terms or clichés. But I have noticed with some alarm (!) a
creeping increase, over the past couple of decades, in the number of sports
terms, FAR too often unexplained, or self-evident, sneaking into 'general
speak' -- the way most of us speak most of the time. 'Hat trick,' a term
borrowed by hockey from soccer (where it actually _has_ a meaning), is a
good example. 'Skin in the game' could be another.
I certainly hope not. Hat trick sounds like something fun. Skin in the game
smacks of violence, to one's own body or someone else's. Perhaps sports
speak inventors' creed should, like doctors, include the concept 'do no
harm'.
(the other) doug

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