Ok, then why isn't EU a Mecca of enterprise and innovation? Seems like EU is largely technologically stagnant compared to the US despite tons of safety nets at every level.
1. The US has almost 330 million people; Europe has 740 million - but we're spread over so many different countries / policies / cultures etc. Hell, eastern Europe was locked out up until 30 years ago, and didn't stat to see industrial prosperity until 20 years ago.
2. USA had a massive advantage after WW2, while Europe was still in shambles. The rebuilding of Europe wasn't really completed until the 50s and 60s, at a time when the US experienced its golden age of industrial development.
3. More rich people and more investors compared to Europe, from earlier on, coupled with excellent schools that could produce and feed talent into the industry.
Sure, we here in Europe have had excellent schools, but nowhere near the financial backings. In many countries, financial backing of tech and companies have been a gov / state affair, which in turn can be extremely limited compared to private investors.
etc.
Needless to say, Europe was it its peak at the time, and has only declined since.
Excuses are easy to come by - root causes are more useful to examine.
(I have no opinion on grandparent; I am reacting only to your choice of the term "3rd-world country".)
1. It’s an order of magnitude easier to fire people in the US Vs the EU. That means American employers are more willing to take chances on people, ideas and growth. EU small business are family run for a reason.
2. It’s an order of magnitude easier to shut down a business in the US Vs the EU. So, again, an entrepreneur can take more chances in the US.
The EU favors big businesses that are hand-in-glove with the government. The US does so to a much smaller extent - smaller players and individuals have a fighting chance. Most US mega businesses today were tiny not too long ago (e.g. almost all of tech).
The healthcare system in Germany is that the monthly insurance fee is like 15% of the wage of an employee and the employer has to pay half of the fee. If you switch from being employed directly to freelancing, you have no employer, and you have to pay at least twice as much for health care insurance. Twice as much, if you are lucky, since freelancer do not get a wage, the calculation is changed from 15% of the wage, to 15% of all income. In the worst case if you are a fire guy and have a lot of investments you can go from paying 50€/month for insurance to paying 700€/month with the same income, just because you work without an employer. (with public insurance, private insurances do their own fee calculations)
Basically, as soon as you do something non-traditional, you lose the safety nets
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-w...
Instead I'd just like to know: why do you think enterprise and innovation is more valuable than you or a member of your family needing an operation not bankrupting you?
There are more important things than work. In the UK we value the NHS so much it featured in the Olympics opening ceremony - a segment the NBC refused to air - because it literally keeps us alive better than anything else.
Does this mean it takes us longer to save up for our dream home because we're being taxed more heavily? Sure. But we don't care, because we realise that balance is more valuable.
I'm genuinely curious: is this attitude seen as eccentric or naive outside of these shores?
US cherry-picking on- and intelligence inference in EU economic actors is way higher than the very meager reverse. If a EU company becomes successful or strategically interesting, it will typically be bought out by the US to be assimilated or disrupted.
In software US befitted immensely from a more homogeneous home market at a time where internationalization was very far from trivial and higher costs of software development favored a more coarse business granularity (in the EU a 'large' company starts at 251 employees).
All these taken together means the EU software market is disproportionately skewed towards bespoke B2B software development and embedded systems linked to more traditional industries such as automotive.
If by "a Mecca of enterprise and innovation", you mean "has lots of unicorns", I think this is a poor proxy for that metric—in fact, the opposite may be true as large players can often work against smaller innovators entering markets.
In fact, the EU is over regulated as a rule and discourages risk taking. For example GDPR compliance cost.
Also, the US is richer, so all startups want to conquer it as it's primary market. This is a positive feedback loop because talented people want to move to the US to make it big.
In Austria/Germany the average tech gig is hire and fire. If some managers sees that your velocity in Jira is lower than the rest of the team for too long you'll be given your notice period and let go easy peasy, no sweat for the company.
To quote on of my ex German boss after he fired a colleague of mine "software engineers are dime a dozen, recruiters flood me with their resumes every day, I can have someone from Poland in his place next week".
This was a F500 company.