Comment Number: 522418-06456
Received: 7/6/2006 12:07:50 PM
Organization:
Commenter: Jacalyn Awtry
State: GA
Subject: Business Opportunity Rule
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 437
No Attachments

Comments:

I have been provided with examples of letters to be sent to the FTC about 16 CFR Part 437 Business Opportunity Rule. I support the Shaklee letter 100%. I would like to add the following comments. I hope you recognize that what I'm saying comes from where I live, someone trying to survive in the current job market. I do support efforts to control fraud, to a limit. Throwing the baby out with the bath water and causing additional cuts to the American citizens dwindling supply of income producing businesses doesn't seem like a good idea. My corporate America job has been outsourced to India and/or Costa Rica. I have been living under a sword for the last 5 years and had attempted to put a plan B into place. The result is that two business men in the town where I live have chosen to default on a $25K mediation settlement to have been paid in Nov 05 and my only recourse is to spend another sum of money in addition to the $10K I've already spent on legal fees. I am one of the little guys, and I'm not asking for handouts, I'm struggling to pay my own way in a society where the rich dictate and the unscrupulous do exist. I was offered early retirement and the company sent out a form letter acknowledging all of us who "chose" to take the package for our excellent contribution to the company. I "chose" to take early retirement because if I didn't I would lose medical benefits when the next job cut occurred, if I was one of the people selected to give my position to someone in another country. My friends who weren't able to take the early retirement package are facing the loss of their jobs in the very near future. They will not receive the health benefits package that I received as a retiree. They will have to pay fully for health insurance or find another job that provides insurance, or become a burden on the state/country. Even if they are able to find a job with insurance benefits, corporate America has to remain profitable and if cutting American workers doesn't provide the dollars needed to satisfy the stockholders, these very same people may face job cuts again. Additionally, people like me who have accepted early retirement in order to receive health benefits might also find those benefits taken away as well. Americans have been losing their well paying jobs for years and we still keep buying, mostly as you can read in the papers, on credit. We are becoming, if not already well on the way, a nation of debtors. America's work force has to find another way to survive. Taking on another corporate job is no guarantee of keeping that job, although it does hold off the debt collectors and it does allow Americans to keep their remaining savings, if they are lucky enough to have saved anything, in tact. Someone has to be able to buy the products that the cost cutting corporations are producing. It takes an income to buy those products. A non-corporate job might cover basic living expenses, and maybe a movie or two or a night at the ballgame, but it seems to me that in order to help sustain the American economy there has to be some means of supplementing income for those of us not lucky enough to have made the millions by starting our own fraudulent MLM companies. I totally support putting measures in place to protect the public from fraudulent companies, but it seems to me that some thought and investigation should occur NOW in order to differentiate the existing non-fraudulent companies from the fraudulent ones. Something should be put in place to prevent a currently non-fraudulent company from being able to circumvent such protection in the future. But, at the same time some consideration should be given to non-fraudulent companies and the people who are hard working and who believe in the product they are helping to promote so that at least some portion of the economy has an income to buy what corporate America is producing. Please don't throw the baby out with the bath water.