Just Amway on steroid! slate - "Trumps Great Pyramid"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/02/the_trump_era_will_be_a_boon_for_multilevel_marketing_companies.html

Multilevel marketing companies promise prosperity to the desperate. They’re thrilled about the new administration.

By Michelle Celarier

During the depths of the Great Recession, Donald Trump counted among his many income sources a side gig as a pitchman for ACN Inc., a company whose “members” sold newfangled videophones and other products. “Trust me, it’s changing everything,” he promised in a 2009 promotional video shown to eager crowds of recruits, many of whom would fork over nearly $500 to sell ACN phones in hopes they could sign up more would-be entrepreneurs to do the same. “Believe me, it’s ultimately a dream come true,” said Trump, who also featured ACN on episodes of The Celebrity Apprentice.

But instead of a dream, companies like ACN have become nightmares to many of the people who buy the hype. As with many similarly structured “multilevel marketing companies,” many of ACN’s sellers say they end up losing money, even as they plunk down more and more cash to participate.

As for Trump, his pleas to “trust me” and “believe me” have continued to pay dividends, only now he’s saying, “I alone can fix” whatever stands in the way of American greatness. But even as Trump pursues his biggest scheme yet, one of his old ones will continue to thrive in 2017: The Trump era could ignite a golden age for politically connected multilevel marketing companies—or what critics (and John Oliver) say are often merely disguised pyramid schemes, illegal enterprises in which people primarily earn money by recruiting others instead of by selling products to the public.

MLMs aren’t a negligible portion of the U.S. economy, with some $36.5 billion in sales during 2015 and more than 18 million Americans participating in an MLM in a given year. A dismaying number of figures in the Trump administration also have connections to MLMs—beginning, of course, with Trump himself.

snip - much more.

We have family and friends who do MLM stuff - push it all over facebook, dominates phone calls - and we now just avoid them.

[Angry Dragon]

1. Trump has set himself up as a god and savior

I guess he does have religion