The average as it stands now is somewhere around 77 actually. An average is just that, an average, it doesn't  mean a certain number would outlive it or wont die before it. America isn't even on the top ten (let alone top 20, or 30) of countries with the most vacation days. You take vacation, you're on your own in this country as well. Some Americans work so hard they forget to take a vacation, just trying to live paycheck to paycheck. This sees more profit for corporations and less benefit for workers. If you're fulltime you might get a couple days more but its not much. This helps people get r&r, leave the country and also become more cultured. Being cultured isn't exactly something Americans are known for, just pretty much the fortunate.

What I see as far as America being America, is merely affinity for some symbols of it, like the flag.  I am seeing a decrease in any semblance of agreement on a common set of values, with a left-right divide getting larger and larger, and individuals show absolutely now shame and willing to trash anything for political gain.  It is getting to a place where there isn't likely to be a Godwin's Law either, where you go too far somewhere and it causes people to stop and take pause.

Without even having some agreed to state of sacredness, I really have to wonder what can be done.  In response to your comment, I could give the usual opponent's answer: Why don't YOU start a company and run it different?  

There are a lot of complex issues here, that need more discussion, very likely in another thread.  I don't see where you laid the connection out between vacation time and longevity.

Mom and pop businesses could survive if they stay small. If you go through major growth there is a high chance of being bought out if your rival is causing a monopoly in this country.  Say I wanted to make a rival copying place with a different type of copying style or price range, and made sixteen stores worldwide, Kinkos would buy me out and replace those stores with their names to increase their revenue and possibly hire me to learn new tricks in taking over certain towns, etc. Microsoft hasn't been sued for a while and thankfully its because of Apples growth tearing into their ungodly marketshare. They've been sued by the US courts for years for monopoly, but the cases always get thrown out. A handful Corporations and conglomerates are going to grow around this country becoming everything to everyone just to dominate out of fear for survival. This is the state of modern capitalist business.

This is a common claim by certain people, but it isn't supported by any evidence.

History has shown that, when the rich get richer, it makes a short term economic boost that doesn't benefit anybody else, and then a crash that tends to hurt the poor most of all. See the GFC as a demonstration of it.

EDIT: It's like the idiots that go "lower taxes means a stronger economy", despite the fact that economic stability has been highest when taxes for the wealthy have been at their highest, and every recession and depression came during periods of particularly low taxes for the rich. The facts and history simply do not support the arguments of such idiots.

If the wealth increases spread more evenly, then yes that can happen.  If it is in terms of rich getting richer, where the advantages have an exponential effect, and the games are selectively at the top, then that is a problem.  I assume GFC here stands for "Global Financial Crisis".

I should clarify that I'm referring to "the rich getting richer" in isolation - that is, the rich getting richer at the expense of growth for everyone else.

If the economy becomes stronger, making everyone else truly richer, the rich will also benefit from it. But the converse doesn't work.

Which itself is extremely rare.

In general, when the rich get richer, the economy expands and everybody does better... and yes this is backed up by evidence and is one of the most basic economic realities.  It isn't the other way around, because the rich are getting ricehr BY growing the economy.... they're the ones who are doing it... because they're the only ones equipped for mass wealth creation.

I do agree that tax cuts are fairly pointless towards the economy outside of a short term boost.  Though tax raises due nothing but cause a short term to medium term slowdown.

It depends on what the rich do with the money.  If the rich offshore their wealth, invest in China and build factories there and so on, there is no guarantee it benefits the economy of the country where they are at.  Causing an increase in the trade deficit of a country will end up resulting in a hollowing out of means of production, and the country ends up trading off its assets in exchange for imports of goods and services.  The money of the wealthy would end up not growing the economy locally.  In this, there would actually be greater positive economic impact if the government taxed the rich and spent the money on things produced by domestic production.

Anyhow, this is jus a side look at things.  It isn't about what happens regarding the compounding effect and it happening and whether or not that is good or would need to be tempered at least.

When the rich get richer it doesn't expand the economy. More diverse companies creating growth of their own is what causes more opportunities for more people. As I said before when large corporations and conglomorates buy out the competition they dwindle down true opportunity and true choice within the nation. The rich getting richer is code for the rich (or in this case staggeringly wealthy) fearing to lose money to competition even amongst generational expanding wealth. They will look for cheaper ways to pay workers and ways to top their profit. When there is no cap theres no end to the madness. The wealthy corporations are finding more ways to save money and not to reinvest their money, while increasing LY. 

Raising taxes wont hurt anyone, but people with no jobs. Employers would have to pay people a sufficient amount on average to support a raised tax, which would open up more socially funded opporunties to the people. More government jobs, optional government run hospitals for small cases which frees up space to larger corporate for profit hospitals which generally overflow and overcharge patients just to sit down for ten seconds. No one can tell me it can't work either because theres one where I live and if you don't have a major condition anyone can go there without problems. If you have a major case the for profit hospitals are there. 

Not rare at all. Let's have a look at a graph of percentage of pre-tax household income in the US received by the top 1%, 0.1%, and 0.01%.

This is from wikipedia, by the way. Now, let's have a look at periods of recession and depression. The Great Depression occured in 1929, when all three measures were at their highest levels prior to the late 1990s. The next recession was 1937 - a local maximum for all three. Both of these events were followed by massive unemployment before the depression/recession ended (25% and 19%, respectively).

Now for some more demonstration. The Great Depression? Let's look at the tax rate in the leadup to that period.

In the leadup to the Great Depression, top tax rates were at very low levels. Between 1936 and 1980, the top tax rate was 70%+. In this same period, economic growth periods were stronger and economic recession periods were gentler, even despite events like World War 2. And while national debt as a percentage of GDP was high due to WWII, as soon as the war ended, national debt plummetted, and continued to drop up until 1980.

You probably don't believe that the economy was strong in the meantime. So let's look at GDP per capita growth (in 2011 dollars) since the great depression.

If one were to plot growth rate relative to current total, the rate would be much higher between 1936 and 1980 than at other times. Still going to argue that increasing tax on the rich tends to kill the economy?

In short, the facts just do not bear out your claims of the economy doing better when the rich do better.