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Comment by amix | Hacker News Reader

The major problem is that some of the best Europeans leave to US to start or join startup companies (e.g. Stripe). And if you look at the best US companies you will typically see a large amounts of Europeans in them. So Europeans are very capable of starting and joining startups - they just don't do it in Europe.

What Europe needs is a better way to keep the talent at home.

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We know how to keep the talent at home. The simple solution is to pay them more money (which people tend to crave). But because most European countries have more social security cushion, we tend to pay more taxes. This makes it difficult to compete for companies in say France, Germany, Sweden, etc.

So, at the risk of being extremely antagonistic with this, the solution is for us as societies to start caring less about the less fortunate and give more to the "job creators" like it's done in the USA.

Then we'll be able to compete on a level ground.

What's the point of being competitive if you throw your quality of life away to obtain it?

Exactly my point. It's all about the kind of society you want for yourselves and others. The number of homeless people in North American cities is always a dire reminder that there is a societal cost to deregulation and making life easier for the business bootstrappers. Every other choice you can make for your people as a politician is always a double-edged sword anyway, I'm not knocking the pro-business approach here, it's just that I would choose more taxes every time because I've seen the benefits first hand.

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