By the way; love the put-down of social safety nets. You do realize that the most successful countries in Europe - Germany and the Nordic countries - have the most extensive safety nets? You would be surprised how many successful "American" businesses are in fact founded by people who grew up in the European milieu - people like you. Being scared silly 24/7 of being destitute is not the inducement to starting a business that you think it is.
The reality is that 5% of people are natural leaders, and 95% are natural followers, and although some people can move between brackets with a lot of effort, this is what generally makes the difference. In communist Russia, you had PLENTY of people in business for themselves - protection rackets, black marketeers, smugglers. In America, you have the same thing plus owning a MacDonald's Franchise. The big difference is that in America, the wealthy are far freer to keep every penny that they exploit from the 95% and so there are big buckets of capital swilling about looking for all kinds of ventures to make a fast buck off. Less so in Europe.
But no, living in fear of destitution is not an incentive to entrepeneurship. For most people, they need security before they branch out to try new things. For the few, they will try new things regardless of their security. Donald Trump didnt get rich because he was broke; he got rich because he had access to large amounts of capital from his father and gambled with it like he was in a casino. Sometimes he won and kept the money, sometimes he lost and he declared his corporation bankrupt and passed the bills to his customers, contractors and employees. Not everyone can live like that. Or they can, I suppose, if they NLP themselves enough.