Well, most rat-racers are not making $250k. A more typical example of a rat-racer is a Dunder Mifflin sales reps in The Office, who would probably make between $40-$70k.
The median household income in the US is $44,000. Does mandatory vacation help a family of 4 making $44,000? Or would they be better off with higher wages?
I do not see any reason why the right policies could not both raise purchasing power and grant more vacation time. Keep in mind, as I say in the essay, that the output of most goods in the modern economy is not bound by labor. Most output is bound by natural resource production, land, regulation, and natural monopoly. So if you decrease total labor output by 5%, that does not necessarily mean a decrease in output of food or housing or fuel oil by 5%. So there could be ways of increasing vacation time without lowering people's income.
Humanity's big problem is probably not improving the lot of Americans.
Well yeah, but this article is about America, and I'm a lot more involved in the problems of America than the problems of India. I do not know what I can contribute to solving the problems of India.
I'm left though wondering whether society's attentions should be focused on the plight of your "rat-racers" --- the doctors, lawyers, software salespeople. They may be caught in any number of collective action problems, but on the whole American productivity is high and the parts of society that rat-racers engage with are generally not dysfunctional. Rat-racers in the US are not generally working themselves to death, like they are in Asia. So I'm not sure how concerned I should be about the work-life balance of someone making $250,000/yr.
The median household income in the US is $44,000. Does mandatory vacation help a family of 4 making $44,000? Or would they be better off with higher wages?
Perhaps I have 'yummyfajitas to blame for this, but every time an issue like this comes up on HN, I can't help but think about the differing quality of life between the US middle class and the rural poor of Asia. Humanity's big problem is probably not improving the lot of Americans.