“The youth unemployment rate is largely an artefact of French law. If employers were free to fire employees without cause, as under “employment at will,” the most common form of employment contract in the U.S. private sector, they would be much more willing to take a chance on hiring workers without a record of satisfactory performance. Tenuring just-hired workers may be good for those people lucky enough to land a job (though average wages will decline because the expected productivity of a worker will be lower than if he could be fired easily), but like other labor protections it is bad for the marginal workers, such as the Muslims who rioted the last time, and for the economy as a whole. It is part of a complex of unwise laws in Europe that are contributing to Europe’s economic stagnation”. –Richard Posner, blogging about the latest French Riots