This is ridiculous. Poor people aren't going to get rich by day trading on 2x margin. And if someone in the US seriously wants to get into margin trading it's not that tough to scrape together $25k by getting a second job and living frugally for a couple years.
Also if you have decent credit you can simply take out an unsecured personal loan for $25k and deposit that in your trading account. This is effectively the same thing as trading on margin.
Why do the poor have to get a second job in order to get 2x margin? Why do they have to jump through the hoop when the rich don't have to? If the poor have $2,000, why cannot they use margin as leverage? The opportunities are not equal there.
If the margin trading limit was lower then the news would be full of sob stories about how greedy brokerages let unsophisticated people get in over their heads and then took their life's savings on a margin call. Sometimes stocks go down.
It is not fair for everyone. But this is an artificial, unneeded hoop that could be easily removed. If we set it at $25,000, does that prevent "unsophisticated people take their life's savings on a margin call"?
Also if you have decent credit you can simply take out an unsecured personal loan for $25k and deposit that in your trading account. This is effectively the same thing as trading on margin.