> Why does this have to be solved at the legislative level? One of the main reason people have to work so many hours is the government diverts much productivit

> Why does this have to be solved at the legislative level? One of the main reason people have to work so many hours is the government diverts much productivity to waste. The best example is health care spending. Americans blow 25% of GDP on it. For all this spending Americans achieve a life expectancy of 78. Mexicans achieve 76 with a far lower GDP per capita of about $13,000 and spend something like 8% of GDP on health care. From this I conclude American health care spending is essentially a wasteful racket. It's not a stretch to say Americans spend one full day a week working to pay for doctors and medicines that don't really work. Pile on other rackets such as massive overspending on defense, over-budgeted police and fire fighting forces, over-budgeted primary and secondary education, and you easily get another day or two. Americans in productive industries are spending probably near half their work week producing to pay for government connected parasitical industries. Legislating less work time is not the primary problem. The first thing to do is address the question of Why are we as a society blowing so much money and effort on worthless crap? Cut back on the massive levels of waste and there will be more wealth with which people can choose how to spend their time, working or not.