In a paragraph lamenting an "incredibly weakly argued piece," Mr. Graeber asks "Has the process of teaching become three times more complicated than it was in the 1930s?" This is not an argument, this is not even data.

Yet the intrepid interviewer answers with "All true, and very correct about the universities...."

Can we do any better about grounding our beliefs with evidence? Here's a paper that finds an increase in American leisure.

We document that a dramatic increase in leisure time lies behind the relatively stable number of market hours worked (per working-age adult) between 1965 and 2003. Specifically, we document that leisure for men increased by 6‒8 hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by 4‒8 hours per week (driven by a decline in home production work hours). This increase in leisure corresponds to roughly an additional 5 to 10 weeks of vacation per year, assuming a 40‐hour work week. We also find that leisure increased during the last 40 years for a number of sub‐samples of the population, with less‐educated adults experiencing the largest increases.

It appears to be mostly based on the PSID.