In the end it's still ordinary people who pay the price for bad decisions.
Tips
culture
Originally Cantonese 埋單 (màaih dāan, 'settle the bill') — the Mandarin 买单 is a phonetic reborrowing that became universal after the 1990s reform era. The figurative '为... 买单' ('pay for someone's mistake') is now just as common as the literal sense.