We also take fewer vacations.
Questions, comments, words of wisdom?
Also which political party do you think makes this situation worse?
The average American works more than peasants from the middle ages
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@n8nrgim
Thats the problem with people. When they dont work, they complain about not having stuff, and when they work, they complain about work. Really, if you want to be poorer, work less. Like, no one is forcing you to work. You can work for 6 months and then quit and take a break for 6 months, and then after you can work again.
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@n8nrgim
As for people who want to spend all their young life working and studying so that they can rest at old age, well they have life backwards. The point of life is to do whatever you want, not to just work and rest until you die. You never even know when are you going to die, so delaying pleasure is a crime against nature. When robots replace workers, people will get a better sense of what life is. Right now they are made stupid by work which takes away thinking time.
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@n8nrgim
Lol, you think peasants from the middle ages just flipped burgers indoors and called it a day?
Try sunup to sundown no breaks in the hot sun where 80% of the people worked on a field son.
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@Greyparrot
Try sunup to sundown no breaks in the hot sun where 80% of the people worked on a field son.
They worked so that others can enjoy. We should learn from their mistake.
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@Greyparrot
They still worked less. Our ancestors might not have been rich, and they lacked many of the creature comforts we take for granted, but one thing they had more than we do is free time. For example, an average American in 1987 worked 1949 hours annually. By 2015, that figure had dipped to 1811 hours a year. An improvement, but still nearly 200 hours more than a thirteenth-century adult male English peasant, who worked an average of 1620 hours annually. A typical medieval workday stretched from dawn to dusk, and the labor could be backbreaking, but there were many breaks for breakfast, lunch, an afternoon nap, and dinner. There might also be mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshment breaks. After a harvest, peasants might enjoy up to eight weeks off of slack times. And that is without counting all the holidays and religious feast days.
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@n8nrgim
Also which political party do you think makes this situation worse?
What, you mean the party that provides public education that doesn't teach what a peasant did in the middle ages?
Both parties support the idea of funding failing schools. Some more than others and louder about it.
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@FLRW
The idea that medieval peasants had an easy life with short working hours and long periods of rest is an absurd fantasy, yet one that continues to be repeated—often by those who ought to know better. This myth, like so many others, has been carelessly passed down through the public school system, which seems more interested in pushing simplistic narratives than fostering real historical understanding. The truth is that medieval peasants worked long, grueling hours throughout the year, and the idea that they somehow labored less than a modern American is laughable.
The Reality of Peasant Labor
It is commonly claimed that peasants worked only 120–150 days per year, as if they spent the rest of their time lounging in idyllic medieval fields. This gross misrepresentation ignores the realities of an agrarian economy. While planting and harvesting were certainly the busiest times, there was never truly an "off-season." Peasants had a never-ending list of physically exhausting tasks:
- Maintaining Their Homes and Tools – Unlike today, where a broken tool can be replaced with a quick trip to the store, medieval peasants had to repair everything themselves. Houses, barns, fences, and wagons required constant upkeep.
- Tending to Livestock – Animals needed daily care YEAR ROUND, from feeding and milking to cleaning stalls and shearing wool.
- Fuel and Water Collection – Firewood had to be gathered and stored, and water often required long treks to wells or rivers.
- Textile Work – Clothing did not come from a store; it was made by hand. Peasants spent hours spinning thread, weaving fabric, and sewing garments.
- Mandatory Labor for the Lord – Many peasants owed unpaid labor to their lord in addition to their own farming. This could include repairing roads, helping with castle construction, or even serving in local militias.
The Myth of Short Workdays
Another fiction perpetuated by shallow historical teaching is the claim that medieval workers had short, relaxed workdays. In reality, work was dictated by necessity, not by a clock. Planting and harvest seasons required dawn-to-dusk labor, and even during slower months, daily chores were never-ending. Unlike modern workers, peasants could not "clock out" and leave their responsibilities behind.
Yes, there were religious feast days, but these were not vacations in the modern sense. Attendance at church was often mandatory, and many feast days involved additional work, such as preparing communal meals or participating in festivities that required labor. The idea that peasants spent these days in leisure is a distortion of history.
Why Does This Myth Persist?
One reason this nonsense continues to be taught is the public school system’s reliance on oversimplification and cherry picking select accounts to fit a political narrative. Instead of presenting history with nuance, schools feed students cartoonish images of the past—peasants as lazy, medieval life as uniformly miserable, and modernity as an uninterrupted march of progress. This isn’t education; it’s propaganda. Students deserve to learn history as it was, not as an easy-to-digest fairy tale.
The Bottom Line
The medieval peasant was not some part-time laborer enjoying endless holidays. He worked tirelessly all year long to survive in a world where failure meant starvation. The fact that modern schools continue to spread the myth of the lazy peasant is an indictment of the way history is taught. Perhaps if educators put as much effort into accuracy as they do into revisionist storytelling, we wouldn’t have to keep correcting these absurd misconceptions.
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@FLRW
How could you even post that garbage link knowing how hard it is to take care of a horse.
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@Greyparrot
Hey, I don't take care of Melania ! Oh wait , you said horse.
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@n8nrgim
If you're fine with a medieval peasant's quality of life, you can work fewer hours. If anything, unemployment is easier now with the existence of social safety nets.
fewer vacations
Do you think peasants were going on luxury cruises or something?
which political party do you think makes this situation worse?
Whichever one is reducing unemployment. Fortunately, government employees will be able to work less hours after DOGE fires them.
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@Savant
So dems provide better social safety net and Republicans get people back to work... so we both agree on both counts that Republicans make the lives of the American people more like medival peasants?
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@n8nrgim
Republicans get people back to work
No, DOGE fires people. So they work even less than peasants.
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@n8nrgim
The average American also works more than people in prison. The solution? Put more people in prison. Vote Republican.
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@n8nrgim
Hey.
The Middle ages period was between the 5th and 15th centuries.
The USA was founded in 1776.
Get my drift.
Sort of...Americans didn't exist during the Middle ages.
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@n8nrgim
Nothing new.