The Workers Want Shorter Hours. Fine, Let's Start By Cutting Their Lunch Hour

I love my job. Especially these two weeks. The kids are in school and I am not. A little quiet time to get stuff done that has piled up over the year. But soon it'll be summer, wonderful summer. I'm extremely lucky that my line of work allows me to share so much of summer vacation with them.

The usual two weeks most people get is absurd. Our lives are generally scheduled by what is best for the boss, not what is best for us; what will generate more profit for someone else, not what will allow us to live the life we realistically could be living. In that fashion, how much is a reasonable amount of down time? Should we, like the French, declare August a de facto month off where the expectation is that businesses will close? How much annual discretionary vacation time would allow us to live fulfilled lives?

UPDATE: Helmut finds a graph that shows vacation days per worker in different countries.