French Student Riots

Student riots in Paris remind us that education at elite academic institutions is not enough to teach either higher morals or basic economics. Not on their side of the Atlantic or on ours.

Why are students at the Sorbonne and other distinguished institutions out trashing the streets and attacking the police? Because they want privileges in the name of rights, and are too ignorant of economics to realize that those privileges cost them jobs.

Like some other European Union countries, France has laws making it hard to fire anybody. The political left has long believed that such laws are a way of reducing unemployment.

More important, they have long remained oblivious to the fact that countries with such laws, such as France and Germany, usually have higher unemployment rates than countries without such laws, such as the United States.

Thomas Sowell