Perhaps you could ask Nate what the effect of the libertarian candidate is. I have seen a few articles showing that Gary Johnson takes more votes from Obama. Why do not more polls have him listed as a choice? If you are trying to sample a population in a future event should you not try to duplicate that future event as closely as you can? If the race is close it seems to me he could be a factor.

It will be a great program I am sure. No one wants to hear about Gary Johnson and I would think more republicans along the line of tea party types would vote for him.

Anything bad that happens to the Koch Bros. is good for America,, let us all hope!

The reason for American wages are low is not because of Obama it is because of men like Thomas Stemberg and Mitt Romney off shoring our jobs to China and pushing H1B visa to bring in foreign workers to take those jobs. Also he and his party also destroy education!

On this morning's show about the large stores (e.g. Staples) replacing the "mom and pop" stores, I hear two opposing situations about Romney's positions on taxes: 1) He says that Obama's proposal of raising taxes on businesses would result in raising taxes on "mom and pop" stores. This assumes, then, that they are netting over $250,000 a year. 2) On the show, the premise is that large stores like Staples are replacing the "mom and pop" stores which are not stores which need people with higher education and are minimum wage jobs, resulting in lower incomes, including the owners along with the workers. Romney keeps pointing out that he helped to start Staples and other like businesses.

Romney can't have it both ways.

By the way, my family is originally from Massachusetts, and my brother had to leave Massachusetts to find work when his business was bought out. He had a managerial job and made a good middle income wage--he was told by the new owners he could relocate to another state (at his own expense) and have the same job at minimum wage. He decided instead to move near another brother in Texas to be near family. He now works, part time, at Walmart, minimum wage, and no health benefits.

Yes, Texas has a lot of jobs, but they are minimum wage jobs.

"Vote for Romney, or you're fired",, O,,, M,,, G,,, what is this country coming to?

three comments:

1. Someone PLEASE tell Chris Hayes he talks too much at the expense of his guests.

2. Does this panel assume the same tactics of company leaders are not used in both parties...it appears that way since they are only using Romney supporter examples

3. I am astounded that this show has not discussed, in depth, the terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy that murdered four americans. Koch brothers seems to be more important to them than this disaster.

I am struck by the description of Kiva Systems sale to Amazon as presented by Thomas Stemberg.

Kiva Systems was bought out by Amazon at 5-10 times it's market value. They paid $742 million for the company. Kiva has one of the most exciting products in years developed to improve productivity and safety in warehouses ... this is true. But the sale to Amazon took this product off the open market. The first thing Amazon did was eliminate all sales jobs. Kiva will be implemented only within Amazon distribution network. This leaves all other existing customers who have made a substantial investment, out in the cold. Check it out Chris, this is a good example of the Bain investment philosophy.

1. Someone please tell Chris Hayes he talks too much at the expense of hearing what his guests have to say.

2. Does this program assume Mitt Romney supporters are the only ones who ask employees to vote for certain candidates? He has only used Republican examples (i.e.: Kochs)

3. I am astounded that no time is given to discuss the terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy and the following lack of information coming from our government.

Would have liked to have seen you ask Mr.Stemberg about Sensata Plant.

A significant impetus for forcing employees to give from payroll, is that it renders the contribution deductible as wages for the employer.

I figured out a good way to do a valid poll that gauges interest as well as preference. Use "tokens." Ask people, say, twenty questions on a variety of topics. Of those 20 questions, however, you give them fifteen "tokens." Only questions on which they spend a token is counted, and questions on which they spend multiple tokens are counted multiple times.

In this way, if someone really cared about a single topic, they could invest all their strength in that single topic, while even if they cared about most questions equally they would still have to choose a few that they don't as much care about.

Ideally this would result in a more balanced pictures of the issues, as it would better reflect how much the respondents care about the given issues.

I'm glad you pointed that out IT is true that Texas has jobs
but they are all minimum wage jobs.

The writer above says that the reason the American wages are
low is because of Obama. I beg to differ, this not correct. Obama want good
paying jobs for all Americans.

This game by the
greedy started with George Bush. Employers started hiring employees through
Temporary agencies to avoid taxes, fair wages, and providing health care for
employees. These are major companies not mom and pop stores.

I do not think the American people understand that the
agenda of the Romney is to bring the wages down. If you listen to Romney he never says he is
going to raise wages for the American people when he talks, he just says he is
going to create jobs 12,000 jobs that he took from the CBO projection of the
growth in our economy if we did nothing.

He has not created
and high income jobs, his jobs are low income and Chinese jobs.

If you believe that
Romney is for the middle class you have not been paying attention to his
campaign. He never started talking about the middle class in his Campaign until
he saw the Barrack Obama had the public’s attention. If you notice Romney does
not have an original ideas. He copies Obama on everything. I
want to know how he plans to lower taxes 20% and average income he plans for Americans. Keep in mind that we just saved the financial
industry (corporate welfare) and there was no money left for us. Now American
won't take responsibility for their lives.
George Bush gave us an Austerity program and it caught up with us when
the President took office. He has worked
to create 5 million jobs and now you want to take another program of Austerity.

Sometimes I think the
American people have a short memory. I
do not want my taxes to be high. However, I do not want to continue the
financial pain we just went through. We need good paying jobs for Americans and
you have to know that if taxes are cut again on top of the Bush tax cuts we
will shrink the economy. We need to keep our Police, Firefighters, renovate infrastructure
in our states, and we need Disaster. If
you drain the Government you will see your neighborhoods deteriorate and you
will see more crime because that is what you get when you have the have and the
have not’s. Look at Detroit. We must
keep our quality of living for all of our country. Do not be divided, our hope
and change is still alive. When we voted for Hope and Change It did not work
these past 4 years is because the real state
of the economy was not disclosed to us by the GOP. I still believe in Hope and Change it has
taken longer because the GOP was dishonest about the way they managed the
American People finances. We signed onto the business plan for the Middle Class
in 2008 we need to stay with it. PROPERITY NOT AUSTERITY

Comparing the financial support that comes from a group that represents the American working class, protections, incentives--keeping jobs here instead of where .. with 2 brothers who represent exactly whom (@ .000001% job-creation) or what patriotic cause and with funds to arrive in a box with a bright red bow of 'you-owe-us' (as in 2) .... And to which would you feel more comfortable in paying back once in office? There's no comparison and spouting in in defense of a level playing field is basic hypocrisy 101.

Chris,

If our retail economy is inextricably moving toward $9 per hour jobs, then it speaks for the absolute need for Obama care to protect workers health.

By the way, Lulu Lemon benefits those at the high-end of the income range. It provides far less general benefit to society.

Your first segment Sunday, with Tom Stemberg, was a dry hole. Comparing the business models of Costco and Wal Mart Stores is about as useful as comparing Pepsi and Coke. Josh Barro was correct. In a dynamic economic you'll have start-up retailers and big box stores. You failed to note, in particular, that in driving down costs and consumer prices, big box stores are stealing U.S. engineering and manufacturing skills and jobs to have knock-off products made in Asia. Most important, the left, as well as the right, must reject the cant about "small business." It's a foolish metaphor based on misguided sentiment. National economic policy is a vital topic that the GOP has corrupted by talking about "small business" rather than Wall Street thievery. Yet Wall Street thievery and snafus, which Obama needs to denounce in genuine FDR-style, nearly killed the world's economy, including businesses big and small. Why he isn't doing do that is a useful topic for "Up."

Just a pushback on Josh Barro's comment in the first segment on retail jobs that I can't believe no one at the table brought up about retail jobs being generally unskilled and low wage jobs to begin with so there has been no change due to big box stores like Walmart and Staples. This is categorically false since in large parts of the nation retail employees were members of UNIONS. Unions that were able to negotiate for higher pay and better benefits than most of the big box and Walmart stores that have eaten away at not only mom and pop stores but at very large regional and national chains.

As a former Safeway employee in Washington state I saw firsthand what happens when Walmart with their low wage and vendor price squeezing practices entered the pacific northwest in the late '90s early '00s. With the exception of Costco all the chain retail grocery stores were unionized, either Retail Store Employees Union or Teamsters. Journeymen food clerks (checkers and cashiers) that made up the majority of store level workers topped out at around $17-18 an hour after about 2-3 years of full time work with cola raises every year. Medical and dental coverage was excellent, I didn't get sick much but there was no deductible, I never paid more than $10 copay for an office visit and $3-5 for prescriptions. For my eye care it covered one eye exam a year $(10 copay) and $125 for hardware, dental was four cleanings at $10 a visit. I can't recall the other dental costs off hand but for crowns, braces and the like 90% was covered for some and down to 60% for cosmetic stuff. Sundays were time and a half, hours were distributed according to seniority meaning once you put in your time you were getting 35-40 hours per week depending on your availability and how high up you were on the seniority scale.

The first contract we had to accept after Walmarts were open and established reduced the cola raises, increased the amounts of employee contributions (meaning we got deductibles) to medical and dental benefits and decreased employer contributions to our pension funds. Sunday became time and a quarter and the seniority based hours distribution was removed. But worst of all we were forced to accept a two-tier promotion and pay schedule spreading out raises over 4 years at 40 hours a week. The first week's schedule under the new contract had me, as a department head working 40 hours a week plus 5 hours on sunday working 32 hours over six days and the next highest food clerk on the schedule was working 29.

And a point about Costco: Yes they pay more to their employees than their big box competitors and good for them. However what tends to get glossed over is this has less to do with the generosity of their management and more to do with the fact that the company was started and has most of it's market penetration is in union dominated states including Washington State where it was founded. The reason Costco began it's policy of paying high wages and benefits was a direct result of having to compete for employees the highly unionized retail grocery market of the Pacific Northwest and their desire to keep our unions out of there stores and maintain control over how they distributed wages, to offer cheaper 401k-style pensions and HMO medical plans and to keep wages down regionally as they expanded into non-union areas.

This is the flip side to Walmart's low wage, low hours, low benefits and anti-union business model, a company that had to bid up wages and benefits to compete with union businesses and somehow still making the owner richer than hell while not putting his employees on foodstamps and medicaid. This is why the single most important thing we can do to put this country back on the path to more wage equality and better standards of living for all it's citizens is to aggressively unionize ALL industries and only support pro-union policies and politicians.

In the discussion of polling there was only about 5 seconds spent on citizens being "informed" -- this should be a major political issue, but it isn't. Despite years of lip service in the schools to "critical thinking" and "an informed citizenry," the public remains largely incapable of critical thinking and largely uninformed about the basics of current events. Not to mention most people also lack the foundational knowledge of, e.g., geography, government, arithmetic, and science that would make it possible to have meaningful opinions and thus be able to participate in politics.

Today our system is predicated overwhelmingly on the assumption that "the public" is mostly ignorant and is easily manipulated: most political advertising would go away overnight if the people who produce these ads believed the public possessed both knowledge and a capacity for critical thought.

There is surely no more important issue for the health of democracy than this. It's even more important than the depressing issue of money in politics: I'm reasonably well-informed, so the way money is used in politics has little effect on my voting habits or on my opinions. (It only makes me despise the candidates more intensely.) It ought to be the aim of reform advocates to give more of the public the ability to respond in the same way, through education.

I hope Up digs into this problem in the future.

I really appreciated the participation of Zephyr Teachout. To have the question is to have the answer, and she seemed most astute than most as to what the meaning of all this business rhetoric is all about for the common man. We need to do better than what we are currently doing. It is one thing to counter every suggestion with an opposing example, but it is another thing to make an account of a particular set of actions. Mr. Stemberg seemed unable to do that very well. He should have just said, "It's all about me" and be done with the discussion. The answer to Ms Teachout's question, though, seems pretty obvious and pretty bleak. Thanks for another great show.

Message for
the Campaign

Say this! Romney
supported the Wall Street bailout. He opposed 400 billion in tax cuts for the
middle class and 400 billion for hard hat construction workers with the Stimulus.

Romney also
opposed the assistance needed by the auto industry for the country to sustain a
strong manufacturing sector.

So, I guess,
Romney supports bailouts for people in his tax bracket but not for people who
work for him.

Mr.
President, say this “in order to get big things done in this country, you need
an election win. We need a deficit reduction plan and I believe the plan must
include the wealthy paying a little bit more. My opponent believes that we need
to get rid of tax credits that you rely on to get by. If you agree with my plan,
then elect me, send a message to the Republicans in Congress and I will get it
done!