Why not 35 or 30 hours or even 25 hours? That last hour or two or three at work are near worthless for me and just about everyone I know. Having parents leaving between 2-4 means they'll be able to pick up their kids directly from school or limit "latch key" alone time. Non-parents will certainly enjoy less time at work and more sunlight and time for physical activities while its still light out.

Seems to me, the dominating narrative, driven by some questionable characters, is longer school hours to match business hours. No, we should be lowering business hours to match existing school hours. We can't compete via hard nose puritanical work ethic turned up to 11. The puritans were, frankly, miserable creatures and 'hard work' environments universally create miserable people who ultimately aren't any more competitive than the less working competitors. Its time to consider the emotional experience of being human and as we have more and more automation options, to consider eliminating a few work hours per week and perhaps eventually replace work as we know it.

There's a fight for the future that's particularly ugly. The "to compete with China/India/whoever, we must become them" vs the "we can do better with less human labor and with more automation." If the former camp wins, it'll be horrific for our quality of life and will not produce the gains these people expect. If the latter wins, we will all have better lives and we'll change our society to handle high levels of unemployment and under-employment.