Paul Krugman: What Happens When Opportunities Are Lost

National Review recently published what was actually an interesting report by Kevin Williamson on the state of the Appalachian region, providing a valuable portrait of its woes - plus an account of how people make food stamps fungible by exchanging them for cases of soda, which they then trade for cash or other things.

But the piece also has a moral: the big problem, Mr. Williamson argues, is the way government aid creates dependency. It's the Paul Ryan notion of the safety net as a "hammock" that makes life too easy for the poor. But do the facts about Appalachia actually support this view? No, they don't.

Indeed, even the facts presented in the article don't support it. Mr. Williamson dismisses suggestions that economic factors might be driving social collapse in this region: "If you go looking for the catastrophe that laid this area low," you'll eventually discover a terrifying story: Nothing happened."