I know that France is the butt of many jokes about work, "no French word for entrepreneurship," but in my experience almost every business I interacted with around socialist Paris was a small, independent business. This was the unintentional consequence of labor laws. <50 employees fall under one set of labor laws, >50 employees you're in a tight spot until you're >1000 employees. Then the additional overhead of benefits for those employees is subsidized by economies of scale.

Having UBI could loosen job protection rules and labor laws too.

UBI and single-payer HC may be fastest way to unlocking capital to the lower and middle class. I know far too many smart people who stick with a job they hate simply because the group healthcare is the only thing keeping the individual or family from bankruptcy.

I thought the point of universal basic income was that it is universal. Everyone gets it so you don't have welfare cliffs.

I don't think those reasons are true for the "lack of entrepreneurship". I'd love to know some numbers actually, I know EU doesn't have as many unicorns like Uber, Google, Amazon, etc. But that is a tiny amount of people who started those (and now employ a staggering number of people).

I think there are two reasons why that may be: - Generally larger regulatory barriers. GDPR is an obvious recent one, but also market complexity with EU countries regulations/laws differing more than US states. I think (without knowing). That coupled with "first to market" advantage of US companies. - Money isn't as big as a driver for Europeans. "Rags to riches" is a pretty American thing. "Get educated and live well" is closer to our lookout I think.

Until recently, I don't think you could start a company and reach the entire EU area. Can you now?

In the US, any person has access to consumers all across the US. I think this is a big part of the success of US companies.