Do You Hear the People Sing?

No...not Enjolras and Marius at the barricades fighting for the miserable poor and downtrodden, but French students protesting for themselves, regarding job security.

France has suffered for years from a high unemployment rate- hovering around 10%, plus or minus a decimal point or 2. Among French youth, unemployment is around 23%.

From the BBC News:

The law allows employers to end job contracts for under-26s at any time during a two-year trial period without having to offer an explanation or give prior warning.

The government says the law will encourage employers to hire young people, who in some inner cities make up 50% of the unemployed.

But students fear it will erode job stability.

So the French government has finally smartened up and is trying to actually improve the job market by allowing bosses the power to get rid of employees under the age of 26 during a 2-year trial period. And these coddled students are throwing a hissy fit over this?!? This is tyranny of the employee over the employer. Who is the real victim here?

As Michael Medved put it this past week: "Jobs are not an entitlement. Jobs are an opportunity."

A big reason France has such a high unemployment record is because bosses are unable to fire their employees, no matter how incompetent. Supposedly, according to leftists, the compassion of such job security laws will insure low unemployment rates.

Yesterday, the trade unions were adamant that they will only negotiate after the new law be withdrawn; not negotiate with Dominique de Villepin on the law itself. I'm still scratching my head on that one.

I'm beginning to wonder what exactly is it about "higher education" that produces so many misguided young people. Of course, I don't think there is a single French university that ranks high on the list of colleges to attend. France's descent into socialist programs of the past 50 years should be an example to us here in the U.S., that liberal entitlement and welfare programs are a thing to be shunned, producing the exact opposite of the desired result.

Looks like President Bush's approval rating isn't the only poll number to drop in points for doing the right thing:

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who supports the new labor law, has seen his approval rating drop to 36 percent. That is what happens when you try to talk sense to people who prefer to believe nonsense.

and as Thomas Sowell concludes in his article:

The fact that such profound ignorance of basic economics and such self-indulgent emotionalism should be prevalent at elite institutions of higher education is one of the many deep-seated failures of universities on both sides of the Atlantic.