From a startup perspective, I've always thought it interesting that more people in Europe/rest of the world don't take chances to create companies because of the great safety net there--at least its not as highly publicized. For whatever reason, the US is still the place to be and everyone wants to come to the US to start a company--my current company included (We have Canadian founders).
I quit my job and thanks to the insurance changes in the US a few years ago, I was able to stay on my parents health insurance for a meaningful amount of time. It allowed me to take the chance of starting my own company. Unsure if I would have done the same, had circumstances been different.
Others are responding in a way that explains your premise, but I actually reject the premise. Specifically, I do not think this is true:
> From a startup perspective, I've always thought it interesting that more people in Europe/rest of the world don't take chances to create companies because of the great safety net there -- at least its not as highly publicized.
There are a lot of startups in Europe; particularly France, UK, Germany, Switzerland and Scandanavia, and they are well publicized locally. I hypothesize they don't get surfaced to the attention of Americans for a few reasons:
1. Essentially no country in Europe provides businesses with as many freedoms as America does. American businesses have more autonomy, and a lot of basic facts about American life primarily exist within the framework of a business (e.g. healthcare). This makes it a less attractive environment for investors, so these startups don't get international attention as easily.
2. Partly as a result of #1, and also because of a reduced cost of living (and thereby labor) in much of Europe, startups in Europe typically don't pay as well as those in America.
This is to say that Europe has lots of entrepreneurialism, it just exists in a less recognizable way compred to America due to cultural, political and economic differences.
Europe provides a better social net, and this is funded in larger part by heavier taxes on companies. To encourage entrepreneurship, small companies are exempted from many taxes and regulations, which causes there to be a more prominent cliff as a company grows from small to large.
This is perhaps most noticeable in France, where a lot of stuff kicks in with your 50th employee, and so there are a great deal more companies with 49 employees than 50 employees.
I think a consequence of this is that European entrepreneurs tend not to result in as many large companies as American entrepreneurs, as you'll have more people who stop at a smaller size to avoid the penalties of being large.
It’s only a safety net to you. If you have free healthcare your entire life you don’t think of it as a safety net it’s just something you expect.
And the sort of worries Americans have about healthcare stopping you from starting a business we just move those worries elsewhere to rent or whatever.
Europe probably has about as many startups as the US if not more. There certainly seem to be a lot more independent contractor software engineers.
The bottleneck to highly publicized startups is investors. Investors are less likely to let people use their money if they think the government will get in the way of their growth.
Once you agree a safety net is a net positive, then it comes down to implementation.
In this case, the employer is the parent's employer. Which means that the people who can take the risk to create startups is limited to "people whose parents have health insurance". Which excludes a large section of society, including for example poor people.
(also--and this might be a bit of a jump for someone just learning about inequality of opportunity--but a fun thing to research online is "why is the US the only country with employer-based health insurance", especially once you discover the answer is "slavery")!
During World War II, the US government imposed price controls to prevent the market from reflecting the reality of shortages. Employers started competing by offering health insurance because they were barred from raising wages.
I actually confused my facts here - it's tipping I was thinking of that comes directly from slavery. Employer-paid health care just _continues_ because of racism, as opposed to being created by it.
USA might be better for startups than else where (I have no idea), but it's definitely gotten objectively worse since the 70s, measured by number of companies started every year, number of publicly traded companies, and so forth.
IMHO, universal healthcare and childcare would indirectly lead to a lot of new startups.
It's easier to bootstrap in Europe, it's harder to go further than that because of much higher regulatory barriers (ex: need to implement GDPR from day one) and a lack of investment dollars relatively. Also since it's more comfortable, european startups looks more like Radical Fish Games (from germany) or Bear (from Italy) than they do like Spotify or Nokia.
I quit my job and thanks to the insurance changes in the US a few years ago, I was able to stay on my parents health insurance for a meaningful amount of time. It allowed me to take the chance of starting my own company. Unsure if I would have done the same, had circumstances been different.