The National Review ran a remarkable article about poverty in Applachia last December, which was recently reprinted at The Week.

The author, Kevin Williamson, writes about the use of food stamps for black market Pepsi.

It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cardsare swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.”

He describes a grim and pathetic poverty without any redeeming virtues of hard-work, thrift, and grit.

This isn’t the Kentucky of Elmore Leonard’s imagination, and there is nothing romantic about it. These are no fiercely independent remnants of the old America clinging to their homes and their traditional ways. This is the land of families of four clutching $40 worth of lotto scratchers and crushing the springs on their beaten-down Camry while getting dinner from a Phillips 66 station.

Williamson is pretty harsh on the food stamp program and other government benefits, because he believes that they are supporting bad habits. But he also says that this poverty isn’t caused by “bad values.” In this area of Eastern Kentucky, people stay married and aren’t making too many teenager mothers.

Read it. It’s good to read both points of view. And there’s some nice writing in there.