Doug"
Doug, it is not that I have a hard time believing this, it is just that I am not used to the idea that immigration and more women in work is a bad thing.
Aggregate hours worked in industry don't tell us much about hours individual people work. You seem to accept here weekly hours are falling.
You did relate the growth in aggregate hours worked to population growth, but it is the size of the workforce (which, if it is anything like the UK's grew rather more than the growth in the population) that they should be related to.
I am extremely sceptical about figures that purport to show people working longer hours, because I have found, again and again, that the figures cited to show that people in Britain and Europe work longer (see Madeleine Buntin Willing Slaves; or Pietro Basso, Modern Times, Ancient Hours) turn out to show the opposite. My understanding was that Juliet Schor's account of Overworked Americans (1988?) had to be somewhat moderated by the findings in Arlie Hochschild's Time Bind (1997).
Also, I don't know about the US, but in the UK we have many more single parent households, as well as more double-income households - which would put a rather different spin on your model of increased household income being due entirely dual incomes.
And I don't know why you are being so pissy. I was rather pleased that we had a consensus that excessive consumption was a matter of ruling class consumption goods, not working class ones. That seems to be rather a long time coming on this list. But you are right, I just don't believe that the majority of people are worse of in access to consumer goods. The immiseration thesis, like the 'iron law of wages', always was a crock, I am surprised to see it revived.
PS sorry about the links, they are generated uniquely each time by the ILO web-form.