[Steer]

I am European (Swedish), but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the notion that the welfare state would produce more innovation/entrepreneurs. We have a large public discussion here in Sweden that we need to create more new companies and we definitely have a welfare state.

I would argue that a welfare state COULD be helping entrepreneurs, but that depends where all the taxation for the welfare state comes from. In Sweden it is very expensive to hire people for example, and it is also very hard to fire people (besides the point, taxation-wise, but still), The companies that hire people pay a large part of the welfare state. This makes it very hard to grow a company since it is so very expensive to hire.