Whenever I see Art Woolf’s name on the op-ed page, I brace myself for another truly incredible argument from beyond the looking glass. His letter in the Nov. 30 Messenger (cross-posted on Vermont Tiger) once again renders me near speechless.  He begins by observing that Vermont dairy farmers are “in a terrible pickle.” Ignoring completely the role that dairy conglomerates and retail giants like Walmart have played in creating this “pickle,” Woolf advances the following argument which barely alludes to the toll his beloved “free market capitalism” has taken on U.S. dairy farmers:

“Prices for their products are way down (in part due to the tremendous reduction in international demand for milk caused by the financial crisis and economic recession) and their costs keep going up. But it is disingenuous for Senator Sanders to suggest that despite being against allowing “guest” workers into the U.S., the predicament of the dairy industry in Vermont and elsewhere is so “desperate” that a guest worker program is needed to provide the farms with workers willing and able to do the manual labor jobs that farmers are unable to fill with local workers.”

He then goes on to state the obvious:

“Agricultural laborer jobs just don’t pay enough to attract Vermonters…”

and that

“If Vermont farmers had to pay a wage high enough to attract Vermonters, their economic plight would be even worse than it is today and even more farms would go out of business.”

That said, Woolf’s interest in the dairy farmers’ plight and any consequent threat to local food security seems to have been spent as he moves quickly to the real meat of his matter; namely, equating small local dairy farmers with financial institutions that benefitted from TARP!  

“The question is why Senator Sanders seems to understand this when it comes to farmers and their need for unskilled labor…So it’s OK for unskilled guest workers to work on Vermont farms to help them survive in a competitive market, but not OK for U.S. financial institutions to hire skilled guest workers to help them survive in a competitive market (?)”

This, from a member of the Economics Department at UVM, Vermont’s premier agricultural school, is a real mind-bender.  Apart from the obvious incongruity of equating small local food providers with greedy financial giants that have impoverished the nation while claiming huge personal bonuses, Mr. Woolf appears to be asserting a failure on the part of American economic academics such as himself to produce a pool of skilled domestic financial workers to serve at U.S. financial institutions.  If this is in fact the case, doesn’t that support one of Senator Sander’s other arguments that we should be committing more resources to raising the standard of living and education of American workers and their families rather than outsourcing jobs and opportunity to the lowest global bidders?

Earth to Professor Woolf:  Please do your homework.