There are some fairly intense tradeoffs though, it seems all of the best places in the world when it comes to social safety nets are generally not the places th

There are some fairly intense tradeoffs though, it seems all of the best places in the world when it comes to social safety nets are generally not the places the innovation is coming from. I have a few critiques of this hypothesis. First, I do not think it's true. If by "innovation" you mean tech unicorns, then sure. But those same places tend to have world class universities churning out highly useful technological advances and scientific insights. Burning huge piles of VC cash to create a monopoly a dozen other companies are also competing for seems like a weird metric for measurng innovation... But I guess that word means different things to different people. Second, these countries often but not always have strong economies. Necessity is the mother of innovation, and lack of necessity often coincides with wealth. Third, Germany seems like an obvious counter example to this, as long as you're willing to consider innovation as something that encompasses a lot more sectors than young Internet services targeting highly aggressive growth curves... Their energy industry is highly innovative, for example.