To Swell France's new socialist government proposes to cure its youth unemployment problem by hiring 350,000 people under age 30 as civil servants.
Observers say such cosmetic cures have been tried often before and inevitably failed.
They see the prospect no different this time. Businesses, already heavily taxed, are betting that the cost of all those civil servants will be passed along to them. France's effective tax rate at the corporate and personal level combined is 65.4 percent. Economists say that if France would ease the regulatory and tax knot it has tied around its business community, and get rid of the minimum wage, those 350,000 youthful civil servants might be swept up into the private sector.