Why, for instance, you would have to pay 60+% of your faang engineer salary as taxes in some countries?
Do you feel any freedom to choose where your money goes (as in “free market”?)
Or what would it take to fire an employee in France in comparison to US?
Would you as a startup founder at this moment feel the “invisible hand” or rather some politicians’ hands who decided everything for you?
With a FAANG salary the tax rate is pretty similar in California to the UK, Norway and Germany, working out between 42-46% on a $500k income. France is somewhat higher at 57%.
Silicon Valley FAANG engineers are paying almost 10% more in income tax than those in states like Washington or Texas without an income tax. So why did Silicon Valley grow up here rather than in those other states? At least in part it was the enormous public investment by the Department of Defense during the Cold War.
This is only taxes (income tax + employee share of all social taxes) visible to the employee. If you factor in employer share (which really really does not belong to the employer, it's really the "socialized" fraction of the employee's salary... yet it's not reported that way in France), then taxation in France is much higher (only second to Denmark, I believe).
So income tax is not what we should be looking at, but all mandatory withholding (even those that aren't named "taxes", though it is what they are!). The net effect is that 100K salary in the US costs 125K to the employer, whereas 100K cost more like 180K in France (use https://entreprise.pole-emploi.fr/cout-salarie/ to see this).. and of course the fraction retained by government goes higher if salary goes higher.
Not saying this is a bad thing, just pointing out that the comparison of income between US and France as shown in the media is really biased and underestimates the French situation.
Prior to the 2018 Trump tax changes, state income tax was deductable on federal taxes, with the only limit being AMT, so the effective tax rate was significantly smaller than federal bracket + state bracket. Now, the limit of deductability is so low, it's almost meaningless. I don't know that silicon valley is tax averse enough to move away though.
Im just pointing out why there’s no big hitech market there hence no demand for own local AWS.
I think, European slow mostly because what I said in another ans - too much competition between governments, and they must made much noticeable differences, for which could spend more taxpayers money.