My start-up is offering private investment in the company but I don't qualify to invest with the SEC guidelines in Rule 501 because I haven't been making insane amounts of money. Despite not meeting the criteria, I have at least five thousand dollars saved I'm prepared to invest. How is this fair? How is this not keeping people poor?
I think for the answer to this question to be yes, you have to think the number of opportunities for investment in private companies to be plentiful when compared to other ways to invest.
I'd argue that investing $$$ in private companies, apart from being very risky, is just not that common an opportunity for anyone, let alone someone who doesn't have a lot of assets or income.
Other opportunities:
* Real estate
* Common stocks
* Mutual funds
* Bonds
* Options
* Working for such private companies (income and stov options)
All of these are more accessible, less risky, more transparent, and more liquid than investing in a private company.
I'll leave aside whether the US government should be protecting investors with less than $1m from themselves (which is a different question).
It's definitely a form of gatekeeping designed to ensure "stability" for the wealthy, but a poor person who gets a good return isn't going to become wealthy unless they're extremely lucky. It enables a lot of wealthy people/organizations to play with poor people's money and get paid very well regardless of whether they're successful or not.
