At first glance, this chart makes it look like food stamp usage has gone from almost nothing at some unspecified time in the past, to some huge amount over a span of who-knows-how-long.

Only a fraction of the visitors to the site will click on the chart to see the scale, which reveals that the increase is about 6% of the population over four years.

While it’s certainly worthy debating whether a 6% increase in food stamp usage over four years is alarming, that figure doesn’t grab like the sharply-angled chart, which puts 8.5% and 26M as the lowest measurements, where our brain expects to see a baseline of zero.

Illinois rewarded for misspending only $52 million on food stamps « Watchdog.org.