this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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I don't think you'd have to work longer hours than a medieval peasant if you were living a comparable lifestyle: a thatched roof hovel, basic staple foods, no electricity or running water, no car, phone, television, computer, or appliances, etc. Plus those working hours are often spent sitting at a desk pushing buttons, instead of sweating in a field.
Technology and industrialization has and continues to increase an individual's productivity exponentially. With increasing productivity we should be living better lives while being able to work less. Not equivocal or even more. The issue is capitalist economics are about over-production and constant growth, not meeting need. We'd still be living in candle-lit brick apartment complexes with your extended family in a studio apartment working 15 hours in the coal mines if it wasn't for labor unions and violent resistance. Then they found out they can pacify people easier through consumerism than they could with the barrel of a gun.
This is all to say, we do not need to work as much as we are to keep the quality of life we have.
No, you do. The lowest level of legal living is almost infinitely more expensive as a proportion of work hours now than ever before in history. If you're in the us, a weekly rate motel is likely your cheapest option, and that's still going to cost more than the federal minimum wage per month assuming full time work. In even industrial age cities a room at an inn cost about half a days wage for hard labor; and for the medieval ages land rent was basically a joke in comparison.
That kind of ridiculous hyperbole doesn't instill much confidence in the accuracy of the rest of your claims.
A studio apartment in my region, at the outskirts of a city, costs 50hrs at my state's minimum wage per month, under 2 hours a day on average. This source estimates 1620hrs/year of work for a 13th century peasant, an average of about 4.5 hours a day (although this was mostly seasonal, that doesn't affect our average). About half of that went to the lord or church, so we're talking a little over 2.2hrs/day for a peasant to afford rent, compared to 1.6hrs/day in the modern era.
And again, that apartment is connected to water, electricity, and Internet. It has modern insulation and air conditioning. So even just for lodging, we work fewer hours for more comfortable accommodations.
We do work more overall, but that's more to furnish the luxuries of modern life (compared to a 13th century peasant).
Congrats on living in a ridiculously low cost of living country that's not the us, the west, or even most parts of china at this point.
I live in a major US state in a moderate to high cost of living city. Most of the populous states have minimum wages between $12-18. Rent at a trailer park is easily doable at 1.5hrs/day at $15/hr.
It really isn't. Maybe 40 years ago. There's a reason we're in a cost of living crisis and the homelessness rate has soared in the last five years faster than any other point in us history. Its not a lack of jobs.
Hell working homeless is at its highest point in human history.
I'm basing everything on 2025 numbers. You seem to be just making claims based on vibes.
No, you're making things up entirely based on imaginary ideas. A studio for just a week's worth of work a minimum wage? Even in the early 2000s that was practically a myth. No american I have ever known has paid less than half their wages for rent; including myself when I still lived in that shit hole.
Maybe the rich lived differently, and from your naive idealism it's clear you did, but christ I would have loved to not pay nearly all my income for housing.
I don't know what to tell you. I searched rental listings and based my calculations off that. Reality disagreeing with your preconceptions is not my problem.
My first apartment was $525, I was making $10/hr as a gas station clerk, which you will find comes out to 52.5 hours of work. Full time work is 160-175hrs/month, so that was just under a third of my wages, and my math shows 1/3 < 1/2.
Prices for apartments have certainly outpaced wages, I won't argue against that, and obviously the calculations are a bit different if you're trying to live downtown in a major city. But those examples are way nicer than a peasant's hovel anyway. Trailer rent is still pretty cheap.