What I hear from europeans is that it sucks to be there if you're ambitious.
I wish that the USA did better on taking care of people, (because it sucks right now) but some on the left act as if there are no consequences to deciding to implement these things.
In my experience working with some former European entrepreneurs, the startup problem isn’t really directly related to anything about social democracy or safety nets or even taxes.
They talked about how difficult, painful, and risky it was for them to start and operate a company at every turn. Even things like bankruptcy and allowing founders to move on with their lives if their startup fails, which we take for granted here, are not a given in European countries.
It’s not just the government to blame. The private banking and even societal norms are very different in ways that we don’t even consider in the United States.
The US is very friendly to funding and building startups. I didn’t appreciate it until talking to ex-founders from various European countries as well as many founders here who explicitly left EU countries for America because they wanted to start a company.
I agree that it's not as simple as "regulation" and "taxes"- it's more fundamental than that.
Which is why I think it'll so so hard for the USA to implement a fair social health care system, even though it needs one so badly.
Elitism / classism might be part the reason why social democracy is possible- if you believe that there are simply a group of people who need help in society you might be more willing to give to them.
If everyone is completely equal it might seem like no one actually deserves anything "more" than anyone else.
It's most likely an artifact of smaller, less liquid capital pools and the fact that the US is a really easy large market to tap into, leading to European startups investing into the US market in preference to their own.
If the country were any bigger the domestic market becomes the defacto, limiting growth....