July 22, 2014
I agree with the comment submitted Kiran Lingam at SeedInvest available at http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-06-13/s70613-546.pdf that raising the accredited investor thresholds would be disastrous for startups, job creation and the U.S. economy.
I question the fundamental assumption that I need to be protected by the government from making bad decisions regardless of the amount I earn or my net worth. We are having discussions about the gap between the general population and the "1%" while at the same time proposing laws that give the 1% special privileges allowing them to invest in lucrative opportunities that are not available to the general public.
If there is to be a limit the recent change that removed a person's home from their definition of net worth has been a huge upward adjustment to this threshold. If we just consider the average Jun 2010 home value (year the house was removed from the calculation) of $256,700 that implies investible assets were increased from $743,300 to $1,000,000 which is a 35% increase!
I do not think that creating some sort of bureaucratic process to assess "sophistication" is a good idea either. We do not need more government control over our lives.
Sincerely,
William D. Hill