text: Well, the working week has decreased dramatically over the past century.  In 1906, a 16 hour day was considered normal, and our consumer culture hadn't evolved to have anything resembling a weekend.  The reason we don't see even shorted periods is because our technology allows us to do more work in less time, meaning that 8 hours today can achieve, hypothetically speaking, 10 hours of work from the past. If we cut the number of hours, we would be loosing out on overall productivity.  Some can blame this on greed of 'the corporations', but if you step off the soap box and take an objective look at our marvelously complex, comfortable and highly advanced society, you'll see that many of the things you take for granted simply would not exist if economic productivity decreased in such a way.