a moment of clarity.

words.

"One in seven Americans uses food stamps today—that’s more than twice 2000’s number. The fastest-growing group of participants is people like Ballard: people with jobs, who work all year round. Many of these workers are employed by big retail chains that take in tens of billions of dollars in food stamps.

In politics and in the news, a lot of focus is put on the many Yolanda Ballards of America. Whether they deserve the food stamp money they get. What they spend it on. Whether they abuse the system. Those were the kinds of questions clinging to recent debates in Congress over funding for food stamps. But throughout those debates, which resulted in more than $8 billion in cuts to the program over the next decade, one subject got relatively little attention: what happens to those food stamp dollars after people like Yolanda Ballard swipe their EBT cards and the money becomes store revenue..."

SLATE: The Secret Life of a Food Stamp