Even in America, which looks like an industrious outlier compared to Europe, we work less, both at the office and at home. Between 1965 and 2011, time spent on housework and childcare for women declined by 35 percent (or 15 hours each week), thanks to dishwashers, TVs, and other appliances that assist the work of stay-at-home parents.

The trouble with the graph above, however, is that it displays America as a monolith, when the experience of individual Americans is anything but. For many Americans, particularly less-educated men and women, Keynes' crystal ball has correctly foretold a future of historically high leisure time. But single parents in the U.S. report the most hours worked and severe time shortage in the developed world, and higher-educated men and women are actually working more than they were 50 years, bucking the global trend. Economists call this the "leisure gap," and it's a mirror reflection of the income gap. When it comes to leisure, the rich have less, and the poor have more. Here's how that leisure gap has evolved over time:

This is an important graph to study for at least two reasons. First it shows just how fragmented America's leisure experience is (and this is only dividing the country by one variable). Second, it reveals the potential biases of the authors. It's appropriate that both Brigid Schulte and Elizabeth Kolbert are successful working moms, since this category of workers has seen its leisure time fall despite rising incomes. Since 1950, young married women's work hours have tripled while married men's hours have declined, according to the Philadelphia Fed. The well-educated rich, married, working mother is overwhelmed. But there are a lot of Americans who are neither well-educated, nor rich, nor working, nor parents. For them, there are probably more pressing concerns than belonging to (in the words of Swedish economist Staffan Linder) a "Harried Leisure Class."

Even among the HLC, there isn't much evidence in the time-use survey data to suggest that we spend considerably more time on work and chores than we used to. So why do we feel busier? Here are some pet theories (you should offer your own below):