... if you had read the article, you would have seen that I am originally American. I have "tried" the American way, and that experience is reflected in my opinions and the article above.
In fact, my argument for more flexibility in the French labor market is based on the clear differential between the unemployment figures in each country, and the day to day benefits to the employee of a system in which the employer knows that the employee has other options if he decides to leave. I have found that in France, once hired, the employee is much more subservient, more differential to his bosses here, because he has fewer opportunity to replace that job with a possibly better one. This is the big secret in France... that "worker protection", limiting the right to fire, has an adverse effect on both the rate of hires and the status of the employee. An employer who has a reasonable fear that someone on his team could leave for a better situation will rend to treat his workers better in order to keep them from leaving.
Your "delusions of grandeur" comment says more about your mis-perception of your own lack of worth than any real understanding of workers in America. Good luck with that.

I don´t get it. I hear this theory all the time but it never makes sense. Ok so it is hard to fire people in France, Jeb was fired and that is sad of course, but maybe because it is hard to fire people in France, less people in his company, co-workers, got fired. Of course I agree we should not tend to look at firms as evil and the workers the innocent victims, it´s just so naive and stupid outlook on the issue, but yes sometimes politicians pander to such populism before election.
Concerning businesses in France being afraid of hiring new workers because they don´t want to be stuck with them, I am highly sceptical about this. Businesses just never seem to see troubles coming, the crisis for companies always comes from the blue sky it seems. So when hiring workers the last thing the boss is thinking about is when he will need to fire him, I think bosses are vastly over optimistic and all hiring comes with the thought that this is the first step in the expansion. I´m from Iceland by the way, and this kind of thinking is frightfully installed in us and it went a bit far last time. =)
The biggest mistake when discussing these things is comparing to USA. USA has the dollar, the worlds number 1 currency, they have endless foreign investment which of course creates tons of jobs. The Euro could emerge now to match the dollar and then you will see things changing very much for the better in unemployment in Eurozone.
Icelanders have been having 0,5%-2% unemployment in recent years still with truck loads of foreign workers coming to work here and always the unemployment was so low, the main reason was a world ocean of foreign investment. Now the foreign investment stopped, and we have like 8% unemployment. The exact same thing happened in Ireland, plenty of foreign investment along with plenty of funding from EU took down unemployment and skyrocketed the GDP.
Protecting workers right only helps employment in my opinion.

no system is ideal, and my argument is that both the French and the Americans could benefit from looking at techniques from outside their home country.
Good luck with your own job search! I hope you will find something interesting & rewarding soon. Please do try to separate your own feelings of worth (your "ego") from your pay package. One of the good things about France is that we are less defined by our job titles and our salaries here. Wait tables for now, get by, but you are the same person to your friends an family that you were before... PhD or not. Scale back your expenses, adjust your lifestyle, but not your confidence in yourself. Again, good luck.