More French Riots

This story is a few days old, but I may as well post it.

The French are rioting again. Once again, it's because they're economy has been socialized into the crapper, but this time the government cares, because the rioters are actually, you know French people instead of Youths of Undetermined Ethnic Extraction (or "YOUEEs").

French employment laws are such that once you hire someone, it's virtually impossible to fire them. So if you're an employer, and someone comes to you straight out of college, with no work experience and no old boss to call to see whether or not he can actually do the job, you're naturally going to be a little hesitant. Which helps explain why unemployment rates for recent college grads are somewhere in the neighborhood of 40%.

So someone in France had a rare lucid moment, and proposed a new law that would let employers fire employees who suck.

So now the French are rioting. I guess that makes more sense than actually making sure you can do your job, so your boss won't want to fire you.

For the above-linked story: "Police loosed water cannons and tear gas on rioting students and activists rampaged through a McDonald's and attacked store fronts in the capital Saturday as demonstrations against a plan to relax job protections spread in a widening arc across France."

Water cannons, huh? Ace has this theory that Europe is about 30 years behind any American trend. In this case, they seem to be taking a page out of the 1960s civil right era, so maybe they're closer to 40 years behind. Whatever the case, I think it's funny that the rioters' proposed solution to the vast problems created by socialism is more socialism.