Hard times: The food-stamp rise shows the recession’s pain

If anyone is still complacent about the recession, here’s a wake-up call on how serious it has become. Food-stamp use is at record levels and growing, with the federal program now helping to feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

So reported The New York Times in a shocking story Sunday that also appeared in the Post-Gazette. Why shocking? Perhaps because this is the United States, which loves to think of itself as the richest of nations, a notion impossible to square with the knowledge that more than 36 million people are now reduced to using plastic food-stamp cards to buy necessities.