Jobless Frenchies

With relentless unions, 35-hour work weeks and the chances of being fired nigh impossible, there's no surpise France suffers from crippling youth unemployment. In order to combat the high youth unemplyoment, the French government recently introduced a bill that will make it easier for employers to fire employees under 26 and thus, hopefully, create more jobs. However, French students don't want a bar of it, even though:

Last August a similar bill was introduced to allow small companies, with fewer than 20 employees, to fire new employees during a trial period without the normal prohibitive procedures that make it impossible for companies to hire and fire in response to market demands. In barely five months these small companies created 335,000 new jobs. According to the Parisian research institute Ifop one third of these new jobs were the direct result of the new bill.

French students think allowing employers to fire people, after hiring them, is too "Anglo-Saxon" which is strictly a no-no, of course. That's the funny thing about job-rights. They only affect you if you have a job. This seems to be lost on most French students.

Every since the French people ousted their monarchy a couple of centuries ago they've been under the misapprehension that all protests and riots serve them well. But au contraire, Frenchies. I wager with fierce economic protectionism and inflexible work-regulations, your economy is heading steadfastly to the guillotine.

Update: A relevant article here that points out:

66% of the British and 65% of Germans agreed that the free market was the best system available, the number in France was just 36%. The French seem to be uniquely hostile to the capitalist system that has made them the world's fifth richest country and generated so many first-rate French companies