Incidentally, one counter-argument I've been hearing a lot of during the Great Vacation Debate of ought-seven is "Why do you insist, Ezra, on telling people what’s best for them " You get this often when you begin talking economic regulation, probably because libertarian types long ago realized it's a nice bit of cognitive disruption for liberals -- we want to help, but don't want to patronize, and are already insecure about our alienation from the working class, and, and, and, and....
But look: I'm not emperor. My whims do not manifest as policy within a fortnight. And one way individuals and societies get to choose their preferences is by actually discussing them. Given that we live in a nominally democratic country saddled with a Madisonian system where the bias is decidedly against change and towards retention of the status quo, no major policy shift is going to get adopted by Congress, passed over the opposition of the Chamber of Commerce, and signed by some hypothetical president without very serious public support -- in other words, without the voters deciding it's in their interest. And we're many steps from that day yet.
For now, I'm making an argument about why we get less vacation than other countries, why that's a negative thing, and why it would be worth changing. If the issue ever does leap into the national discourse, workers will then get to decide what's best for them (and likely be foiled because they wield so little political power anyway). But unless it gets there, workers won't, in fact, be able to make that choice, as the political agenda is absurdly dominated by the desires of business interests. The last few years, after all, have seen a helluva lot more serious debate on business's priority of new trade deals than the public's priority of universal health care. Those complaining about my tendency to make the working class's choices for them tend to be perfectly happy with this state of affairs in which the working class's priorities are never even discussed.
