> If the government takes the bulk of your income after a certain point, there isn't really that big of a push to create ground-breaking technology.
I'm skeptical that high taxes is a large reason to lose to California of all places. Maybe in some important sense CA has "earned" that via talent and funding density while NL hasn't (from the perspective of a company, to be clear)
NL is a corporate tax haven in Europe(and also compared to California), that's why almost all US and foreign companies have their corporate HQs there, Dublin or Luxembourg.
Companies go there because taxes are low for them, not necessarily for their employees(ignoring the NL 5 year tax break for foreigners). It's kinda like the US Delaware of Europe.