Reuters - August 29, 2013
Life for the medieval peasant was certainly no picnic. His life was
shadowed by fear of famine, disease and bursts of warfare. His diet and
personal hygiene left much to be desired. But despite his reputation as a
miserable wretch, you might envy him one thing: his vacations.
Plowing and harvesting were backbreaking toil, but the peasant
enjoyed anywhere from eight weeks to half the year off. The Church,
mindful of how to keep a population from rebelling, enforced frequent mandatory holidays.
Weddings, wakes and births might mean a week off quaffing ale to
celebrate, and when wandering jugglers or sporting events came to town,
the peasant expected time off for entertainment. There were labor-free
Sundays, and when the plowing and harvesting seasons were over, the
peasant got time to rest, too. In fact, economist Juliet Shor
found that during periods of particularly high wages, such as
14th-century England, peasants might put in no more than 150 days a
year.
As for the modern American worker? After a year on the job, she gets an average of eight vacation days annually.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way: John Maynard Keynes, one of the founders of modern economics, made a famous prediction
that by 2030, advanced societies would be wealthy enough that leisure
time, rather than work, would characterize national lifestyles. So far,
that forecast is not looking good.
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