Nothing Succeeds Quite Like A French Riot/Demonstration

Once again, the French have caved into demands of demonstrators and rioters who took to the streets this time to protest the CPE, a change in employment law that would have enabled employers to fire people under age 26. It was seen as a way to get a handle on the rampant unemployment among young people, which is as high as 22%.

Previously, the French government failed to clamp down on the riots in November, and hundreds of businesses were damaged and thousands of cars torched. The current demonstrations have seen violence as well - as demonstrators turned into rioters, damaging nearby businesses, making one wonder just who would hire these folks in the first place.

And the kicker is that the CPE was suggested as a result of the November riots.

The failure to pass the CPE is a big defeat for Chirac and de Villepin. They're working on a new version, but don't hold your breath that it will fix any of the underlying problems:

The crisis and the humiliating climb-down appear to have severely weakened the government. According to a poll published Sunday in the newspaper Le Parisien, 85 percent of the respondents see both Mr. Villepin and Mr. Chirac as weakened, while more than half say it has boosted the position of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

A number of French newspapers reported over the weekend that the wording in a new bill was being held up by a disagreements between Mr. Villepin and Mr. Sarkozy, his main rival on the right.

The minister of employment, Jean-Louis Borloo, told Le Monde newspaper that the new plan will include increasing government subsidies to employers who hire people under 26 who face the biggest obstacles to finding jobs. He said the cost to the government in the second half of the year would be about $180 million.

The problem isn't enticing employers to hire people; it's the fact that employers don't want to hire people that they will be unable to fire because business circumstances change and or are simply poor workers who are unable to do the job. No amount of money is going to improve the hiring practices, though this amounts to nothing more than a government handout to business.

UPDATE:
Gateway Pundit notes that the French appear to have surrendered to the socialists and that the rioters have taken to book burnings:

At least six rooms were sacked, five offices of the National School of Chartres looted, two lecture-halls and all the cafeterias were destroyed, three other rooms were devastated, and forty rare books were mutilated or torched at the Sorbonne. (Via Galliawatch)

The Sorbonne was again occupied, this time for 12 hours by these thugs, and this time they did significant damage to the Sorbonne's collections.

The sad thing is that there's nothing to indicate that rioters wont engage in the same behavior the next time - forcing yet more concessions from the government, and the government will again cave in to the rioters instead of taking a stand against the violence.