Insecure French students inspire good writing about basic economics, arrogant ignorance, and base motives

Reform will actually offer much greater “security” to young French men and women, because it gives companies an incentive to hire more young workers. That alone could reduce the current average unemployment rate that now stands at 10%. “I want to buy things on credit; I want to be able to rent a good house; I want an indefinite contract in order to lead a quiet and secure life”, said an 18-year old girl during one of the demonstrations, according to the Spanish daily El País. That, precisely, is what the social model she is fervently defending is denying her.
-- Alvaro Vargas Llosa via Publius Pundit

Half a million French youths on the barricades of their privileged entitlements, united in an unembarrassed, indeed self-righteous, defense of economic stagnation, have given me much needed perspective. Young Princetonians, I take it all back and beg your pardons. Compared with your French counterparts, you are all mini-Magellans and micro-Mother Teresas. French protestors carried a huge banner: "We Will Never Surrender" (in English, especially for CNN). Bracket the fact that surrender has been France's national outdoor sport for two centuries. What are they refusing to surrender to — apart from common sense, I mean?
-- John V. Fleming via TigerHawk

Nor are the current riots about equality. On the contrary. Their effect would be to enforce inequality. The unemployment rate in France is 10%. For young people under 26 it is 23%, and almost 1 in 10 kids who leave high school don't have a job five years after taking the baccalaureate. Much of that unemployment encompasses those of the alienated immigrant underclass, who are less educated, less acculturated and less likely ever to be hired than the mostly native student rioters. And these young rioters want to keep things just that way--to rely not just on their advantages of class, education and ethnicity but also on an absolute guarantee from the state that their very first job will be for life, with no one to challenge them for it.
-- Charles Krauthammer via Instapundit