
Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you - saurik
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/
======
pg
Statistics about how much time medieval peasants spent working can be
misleading, because a lot of what they spent their time on when they weren't
doing fieldwork was still work, e.g. tending their own gardens, making
implements and furniture, working on their houses. They had to make most of
the things they used themselves. So when "work" was over they didn't go home
and watch TV.

It's hard to be sure exactly what life was like for preindustrial agricultural
workers, but the most convincing evidence that it was very hard was that early
mines and factories were easily able to recruit all the workers they needed,
despite working conditions we know to have been harsh.

~~~
DanI-S
Perhaps given more time to tend our own gardens, make our own tools and
furniture and work on our houses, we'd be a happier and more prosperous
civilization.

~~~
davidw
To me,

> make our own tools

means "hacking on Emacs", and indeed, it is fun.

~~~
DanI-S
Exactly.

------
FD3SA
This is simply a result of the balance of power shifting ever further towards
employers over the past few decades. What incentives does a short-term value
maximizing employer have to give his employees paid vacation?

In addition, a perfect storm of automation, globalization and erosion of
worker rights has severely reduced the bargaining position of employees
worldwide.

Furthermore, by keeping the majority of the population fully occupied at all
times, participation in the democratic process becomes an incredible burden.
Thus, the political arena becomes a playground for those who can afford the
luxury of free time.

It doesn't take a genius to see whom these factors benefit.

~~~
aznjons
Well put, the relationship trends more and more asymmetric. Add in rhetoric
designed to convince workers to buy into a system that exploits them:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240495)

In general, employers have far more leverage over employee's lives than the
individual employee has over the corporation's well being even though we
sometimes pretend that it is symmetric and that the market is fair.

Employers optimize for maximum profit for "the shareholders." Somewhere along
the line, morality is tossed out, and shortly afterward even legitimate long-
term sustainability is also out (cultivating a strong workforce, valued for
their talent rather than purely for their labor).

Add in the feedback loop of political apparatuses being appropriated for
profit (lobbying) and the political arena is just another exploitable lever
for amassing more resources by those with the resources to do so.

~~~
venomsnake
Which creates a fertile ground for Marxism 2.0 . The moment the screws tighten
even more and instead of middle class you get technical/service class for the
elite you will have a lot of unhappy people to deal with.

And as history has shown time and time again when you have a lot of poor and
unhappy people new ideologies could spread like fire.

Another thing that concentration of wealth brings is that when the chant
becomes "eat the rich/powerful" there are very few rich people left to mount a
solid defense - the Arab Spring, the Fall of the Berlin wall all showed that.

(I mix political/military/economic power because I think in electroweak style
theory they are all the same - the ability to mess up with other people's
lives)

------
lsc
What I find interesting is how unusual it is for a higher-paid person now to
negotiate part-time work.

I mean, I've done so at several points in my life, but it's not particularly
easy. it's certainly possible, but you need to establish yourself as important
to the business (for me, in the past, this has meant working full time for a
while.) then do the negotiation, if you want to go half-time.

But usually? cutting down below 30 hours a week kills your benefits. Sometimes
below 35. Even if you reasonably could afford to pay for health insurance,
well, pre-existing conditions keep many of us from buying individual coverage
(and individual coverage isn't nearly as tax advantaged as employer-paid
coverage, and individual coverage isn't as secure as group coverage; it's much
easier for an insurance company to later find a "pre-existing condition" that
you didn't note.)

But that's the big question. The affordable care act is going to make it so
that you can get health insurance on your own, even with pre-existing
conditions, (though, I think, employer-paid insurance will still be tax-
advantaged) - I wonder how this will effect the number of upper middle class
people interested in working part-time.

Speaking of, if anyone wants a reasonable sysadmin contractor half time to 3/4
time, I'm available. I'm looking for around $100/hr, but am open to flat rate
or other billing mechanisms. I've got a fairly high revenue business (rather
more than you'd pay me even full-time) and as such would be happy to go corp
to corp.

Will work for expansion capital.

~~~
tsotha
>But that's the big question. The affordable care act is going to make it so
that you can get health insurance on your own, even with pre-existing
conditions, (though, I think, employer-paid insurance will still be tax-
advantaged) - I wonder how this will effect the number of upper middle class
people interested in working part-time

I would be very surprised if there isn't a rush to the exits from people in
their mid 50s if it looks like health care will be affordable. I know I'll be
able to retire a full decade earlier if I can get health care for a few
hundred bucks a month.

As to people working part time... I can see why people would want to (hell,
I'd like to do that myself), but I don't think it's going to happen to any
great extent. Employers don't like it because there are a lot of per-employee
expenses (as opposed to per-hour). Two half-time employees cost more than one
full time employee.

~~~
lsc
>I would be very surprised if there isn't a rush to the exits from people in
their mid 50s if it looks like health care will be affordable. I know I'll be
able to retire a full decade earlier if I can get health care for a few
hundred bucks a month.

Is the subsidy based on income? or assets? or both? 'cause if you don't
qualify for the subsidy, the affordable care act doesn't make it any cheaper,
it just makes it possible for people with pre-existing conditions to get
healthcare.

Without the subsidy, you are still looking at a grand a month or more for
healthcare for a 50+ person.

>As to people working part time... I can see why people would want to (hell,
I'd like to do that myself), but I don't think it's going to happen to any
great extent. Employers don't like it because there are a lot of per-employee
expenses (as opposed to per-hour). Two half-time employees cost more than one
full time employee.

I am postulating that the affordable care act will make it realistic for
contractors-without-bodyshops (or just part-time folks) to cover their own
healthcare. that vastly reduces the per-employee cost. All of the times I've
been successful negotiating part-time work, it has been as a contractor, where
I had to provide my own benefits.

The affordable care act makes being a contractor (or working contractor-style,
where you provide your own benefits) much more practical. That is, I believe,
what might change things in favor of part-time work.

~~~
tsotha
>Is the subsidy based on income? or assets? or both? 'cause if you don't
qualify for the subsidy, the affordable care act doesn't make it any cheaper,
it just makes it possible for people with pre-existing conditions to get
healthcare.

As I understand it the subsidy is based on income. But I'm not sure. Either
way, if insurance companies aren't allowed to charge more for preexisting
conditions there are a whole lot of people who used to be priced out that will
no longer be priced out. In my case $1k per month is a great deal.

>I am postulating that the affordable care act will make it realistic for
contractors-without-bodyshops (or just part-time folks) to cover their own
healthcare. that vastly reduces the per-employee cost.

Health care is certainly the major cost, but it isn't the _only_ cost. If I
hire one guy to do sixty hours of work instead of two who each do thirty there
are all sorts of savings - one workspace vs two, management overhead,
training, and most importantly communication.

We'll see.

~~~
lsc
>Health care is certainly the major cost, but it isn't the only cost. If I
hire one guy to do sixty hours of work instead of two who each do thirty there
are all sorts of savings - one workspace vs two, management overhead,
training, and most importantly communication.

I think that a boss has to be a first-class idiot to think that one person
working 60 hours a week is going accomplish anything near 2x what that person
can accomplish working 30 hours a week.

~~~
tsotha
I must be a first class idiot, then, because I'm pretty sure that's the case.

~~~
lsc
Even if you think your developers are supermen who can work all the time,
(personally, I believe that is true in the short term, false in the long
term.) in this market, why would a good developer stay with you, when they can
get more reasonable treatment (often for the same total salary) elsewhere?

the "for the same total salary" bit is interesting. Most of the long-hours
software jobs I've seen are salary gigs. Not only no overtime pay, but no
extra hourly pay at all. Why would someone stay with an abusive boss when
there are plenty of other jobs (with, in fact, a much higher hourly rate?)

My other observation is that the more you increase pressure to keep people at
work, the more personal business is conducted at work. And the more the good
people in the group negotiate their way out of the group (either to other
parts of the organization, or to other organizations entirely.)

~~~
tsotha
>Even if you think your developers are supermen who can work all the time,
(personally, I believe that is true in the short term, false in the long
term.) in this market, why would a good developer stay with you, when they can
get more reasonable treatment (often for the same total salary) elsewhere?

There are lots of people (mostly young men) who really enjoy the work and are
willing to put in those kinds of hours because they live and breath the stuff.
That's the way I was in my 20s. It's not "Mistreatment" if you know the score
going in and you're getting paid for it.

Of course you can't keep that pace up as you get older, particularly if you
have a family.

>My other observation is that the more you increase pressure to keep people at
work, the more personal business is conducted at work.

Very few companies increase pressure to keep people at work. They just
structure deadlines such that nobody can finish their work in a forty hour
week. Usually unintentionally, of course, but not always. When I worked in
finance they were pretty up front about it - they expected more than a forty
hour week and we were compensated accordingly.

------
discreteevent
One thing to remember in all these discussions about working hours is that its
one thing to work for yourself and another to work for someone else. I've done
both. When you work for yourself you don't take much time off until things are
going well, and its not a problem. I think the problem arises when people who
own the business genuinely can't understand why everybody else doesn't want to
put in the same hours that they do. It's about ownership. Doesn't mean that
employees can't be very productive for 8 hours and then go home and do _their_
own thing. e.g. take their kids to sport or music, contribute to voluntary
organisations, work on a side project. Each to his own.

------
netcan
This comparison is probably nonsensical. Still, I think the part of the
zeitgeist it's coming from is interesting.

No matter how rich we get as a society, very little of that wealth seems to be
expressed as more leisure time. This is true comparing different decades (We
got richer, still work lots) and its true comparing professions/socio economic
classes (highly paid engineers & lawyers work just as much as call centre
employees).

It is IMO, a failure. Its also very hard for an individual near the median to
break out of it without being somewhat of an extremist.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
It is a personal decision though, right?

Some choose more leisure and others don't.

Go talk to some ski "bums" or surf "bums" to see what I mean

~~~
Fingel
Bike bum here writing from Whister, B.C. Work 20ish hours a week for Silicon
Valley startups remotely and still manage to actually save money simply by not
living in the Bay Area. I have a ridiculous amount of leisure time and
relocate whenever I feel like it. I know this isn't possible for most people,
but I wonder why more of my peers (and those on HN) don't choose a similar
lifestyle.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Wow, fellow bike bum in Whistler. Small world.

~~~
Fingel
Isn't it? I came up with a buddy from SF just to ride for a week... and he
ended up driving home alone :( If you see someone coding in the public
library, it's probably me.

------
smsm42
You could easily afford same vacation time - work only half a year, consume at
the level of medieval peasant (no TV, no internet, no modern medicine, no car,
no fancy foods or clothes, one clothes change a decade, no electricity, no
running water, no sanitation/WC) - and you'll have plenty of money left to
live the dream second half of the year. I'm sure if you forgo the modern
civilization, you can get through pretty cheap. In fact, if you qualify for
welfare, you could probably give up working altogether and still live better
than medieval peasant (they had no free healthcare, free housing, no
foodstamps and no free cell phones). So if you wanted, you could live much
better that medieval peasant with 100% "vacation" time. Most people, however,
want to live _even better_ , so they work to make this "better" happen. Modern
civilization doesn't fall from the sky, you know - people make it.

~~~
makomk
Of course, with no running water and sanitation, one clothes change in a
decade, no car, and no internet connection or electricity you might be hard
pushed to find and hold a job for even half a year in the modern era.

~~~
smsm42
Why, I'm sure there are some jobs in agriculture always available, and nobody
cares how you smell when you're in the fields. There are probably other
options too. But there's always 100% vacation options, many people are using
it right now.

------
exratione
Those commenting here who haven't done so already should go read A Distant
Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. It's a great primer on what life was
actually like back then, and what is and isn't known about the details.

[http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-
Century...](http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-
Century/dp/0345349571)

The discussion on enclosures and factories seems like a red herring, as that
whole mess took off too late in the timeline to be considered Medieval. At the
point at which enclosures were happening in a widespread way in (for example)
the UK, the economy was transitioned into a state of fairly steady growth in
wealth and life expectancy over the long term that would, via compound gains,
form the foundation of the Industrial Revolution.

------
wybo
What surprises me here is that virtually all comments are about whether
peasants really had many holidays.

And not about the current situation (+ the macho 'my hours are longer than
yours' trap that most of the California Software world seems to be in...) that
drains much of the possibility of having a life besides work.

One idea that crossed my mind when I still worked in the Vallley, was that the
situation might be reversed by a 'Union' that only concerns itself with
working hours. Leaving salaries up to everyone for themselves to negotiate as
currently.

This would:

1) Allow people a coming-out in terms of favoring work-life balance. Which
many people confessed to me in private, but did not dare say in front of their
boss/team (has nothing to do with a lack of love for the job/project/company,
even love itself you can't enjoy 10 hours a day 50 weeks a year, or that would
be the length of billionaires honey-moons. Also what is wrong with loving your
life and family/friends in addition to the job, and needing some time for
that?).

2) Create a bargaining position and a public face for it.

3) Dispel myths of long-term productivity gains through longer hours.
Especially in a creative industry like Software Engineering long hours reduce
productivity (there are studies of this + the many self-evaluations on HN over
the years of people being able to code consistently and productively 4 to 7
hours per day max).

Just an idea that crossed a mind.

------
valtron
We get weekends off -- so that's around ~100 days at least.

~~~
igravious
Well then, let's petition for a 3 day weekend. That'll give us the 150 of our
medieval brethren.

I propose we couch it in terms of equality legislation: Fridays for the
Muslims, Saturdays for the Jews and Sundays for the Christians. This serves
all Western monotheistic (Abrahamic) religions equally. In order to balance
things out though we will need to raise hourly wages across the board by 20%
because we'll be only working 4 out of every 5 hours that we do now if I've
got my math right.

Thursday will be the new Friday. TGIF will become TGIT.

~~~
sokoloff
25% would be needed to get to equal wages. (4 * 1.25 = 5)

The 20% is the amount by which your income would be reduced if you were paid
4/5ths as much as today.

------
tokenadult
This article statement, "His life was shadowed by fear of famine, disease and
bursts of warfare. His diet and personal hygiene left much to be desired"
explains why I don't want to go back to the life of my peasant ancestors.

The author's background, "Lynn Parramore is a senior editor at AlterNet, co-
founder of Recessionwire, and founding editor of New Deal 2.0 and IgoUgo.com.
She is the author of "Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century
Literary Culture" and has taught cultural theory at NYU" suggests to me why I
won't take this opinion piece kindly submitted here as a guide to current
economic policy. Actually, today's economy in the United States offers
unparalleled opportunities for each worker to make the worker's preferred
trade-off among cash income and leisure time, especially if the worker is part
of a family household of persons who agree to make different trade-offs from
one another.

~~~
VLM
Other than adding the fear of famine, I'm not sure how different that is from
today.

Fear of disease? Check. Both realistic (as in, the huge fraction with
no/minimal health insurance or any dental at all). And unrealistic, like
fearmongering politicians (as in, send lots of money to X or we'll all die of
some made up thing)

Bouts of warfare, check. Both actual for kids in .mil, and imaginary daydreams
of terrorism.

Inferior diet? Check.

The personal hygiene thing, I donno about. I'm not so foul but seems like many
people are allergic to soap and water, and others who think smelling like an
ashtray is a perfume.

~~~
btilly
Sorry, but if you think that we have equivalent fear of disease then and now,
you don't know what life was like then.

How many people did you personally know who died of disease as a kid? I knew
one. (Cancer.) But this was a period where people would have 8 kids in the
hope that 2-3 of them would survive to adulthood. And disease was the big
killer.

~~~
foobarian
Don't forget about a significant chance of dying or losing limb from any
simple cut.

~~~
hfsktr
What I find amazing is how recently things like germs[1] were given real
attention. I'd heard about Ignaz Semmelweis from a book I read and to think
less than 200 years ago you would go to a hospital and they didn't bother to
wash their hands between patients? Now maybe it was just the hospital in
Vienna, but I imagine many were like that.

Just the things that are taken for granted as common sense now before they
were.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease)

~~~
dredmorbius
The amount of progress in knowledge and technology in the past 200-250 years
or so (pretty much all of the Industrial Revolution) really is staggering.
Take someone from 1750, drop him in the world of 1500, and things would have
been pretty familiar. Move 250 years in the other direction and he'd be hard-
pressed to make heads or tails of anything (assuming you're taking someone
from a part of the developed world -- for the developing world, the changes
would be less pronounced, but still likely significant).

~~~
hfsktr
I had a strange notion recently that if you were to drop the average person
(not an Einstein or a Hawking) and dropped them into say the 1500s Europe.

Most people think we'd be regarded as super smart and awesome. This comedian
explains most people don't know crap[1], we only know the high-level. I think
that even if we could find things we understand to teach it would be largely
not viable (how much stuff around us requires machines and precision?) and
likely wouldn't reach any audience to become a mainstream idea (even above
people thought it ridiculous that germs exist).

I think we'd find people of any time to have clever methods to do their tasks
and we'd learn from them and become indistinguishable from the average guy at
the time.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVxOb8-d7Ic](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVxOb8-d7Ic)

~~~
btilly
Thanks to the Flynn effect, it is likely that most of us would be
significantly better at abstract thought than the average person 500 years
ago. Thanks to diet, we'd also mostly be out of shape giants.

We would, however, be sorely lacking on basic survival skills. Also, not
knowing Latin would mark us as uneducated and not worth listening to.

~~~
hfsktr
I don't disagree with anyone here. It had occurred to me that communication
would be difficult (I don't think impossible). Mostly I thought the survival
skills is what would be learned and then you'd be just like everyone else
trying to survive. Maybe some of the knowledge could make it a bit better
(locally) but a lot of what we know is really built on things that would be
out of reach.

What someone said about geologists and knowing where resources are hadn't even
crossed my mind. I was thinking more of a general high school graduate. Anyone
with a specialty (math related especially) might do better (again I assume
coping and not freaking out or getting a disease immediately).

------
bobdvb
Yet again glad to be in Europe...

------
lhl
Any article on quality of life in agrarian societies should also be contrasted
to what life was like in pre-agrarian (hunter gatherer) societies. Jared
Diamond wrote the most well known/accessible essay entitled [The Worst Mistake
in the History of the Human
Race]([http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html](http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html)):

> "Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers?
> Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive
> people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way.
> It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good
> deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the
> average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for
> one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One
> Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting
> agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts
> in the world?"

Of course, that's sort of besides the point... Before the mid-70's
productivity and median compensation were correlated, however for the past 40
years this has diverged. Since 1973, median hourly compensation grew 10.7%
while productivity has increased by 80.4%[1]

Keyne's prediction in 1930 on the leisure society in the US _would_ have been
correct if the public had continued to share in society's gains. Instead these
gains have been increasingly captured by the top centile. The share of income
by the top 1% has increased over 120% since 1979 [2]. While the top 20% has
also nominally increased (~30%) all the other quintiles have had a negative
share as a result.

Now, knowing this, is there anything that can be done to reverse these trends?
It seems that we've been locking in socio-economic mobility [3] and our entire
government has entered "regulatory capture." [4][5]

[1] [http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-
compens...](http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-
compensation/)

[2] [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-
inequalit...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-
in-america-chart-graph)

[3] [http://www.ibtimes.com/us-social-mobility-casualty-income-
in...](http://www.ibtimes.com/us-social-mobility-casualty-income-
inequality-922041)

[4] [http://i.imgur.com/PVpFY.png](http://i.imgur.com/PVpFY.png)

[5] [http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-
bd.cfm?piece=10...](http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-
bd.cfm?piece=1047)

~~~
dunmalg
>One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting
agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in
the world?"

This sentence illustrates one of my main gripes with JD's "sunshine and
happiness" view of hunter-gatherer societies. Hunter-gatherer lifestyle is
fantastic for that small fraction of folks who live where there are plenty of
mongongo nuts (so to speak). He sort of handwaves the majority, who are eking
a bare subsistence out of the land, or worse, alternately subsisting and
starving.

~~~
lhl
Well, the whole point is that the populations for successful hunter gatherer
tribes would be stable. Barring drastic ecological changes and (more commonly)
attacks/displacement from technologically superior outsiders, aboriginal
tribes have continued living as they have for centuries (even millennia).

Of course that type of society wouldn't be able to support a population of 7B
people, although based on the 2.4B in poverty you'd be hard pressed to argue
that technological society is really doing much better (ignoring the whole
carrying capacity question entirely).

As someone enjoying typing on the Internet right now, I'm by no means arguing
any return to the past, but it'd be silly not to acknowledge how much longer
we work than our ancestors.

~~~
warcher
Don't discount the state of constant warfare most aboriginal societies live
in. If you have a neighbor, he wants your mongongo nuts.

~~~
lhl
Hmm, while this the assumption (in some pretty flawed) early anthropology, I
think the modern consensus is that hunter gatherer societies were relatively
peaceful, both amongst themselves[1] and between each other[2].

Of course, successful/stable hunter-gatherer societies are pretty
geographically isolated, since encounters by tribes w/ more "advanced" (post-
agrarian, colonial, modern) societies usually has meant obliteration.

[1] [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-
learn/201105/how...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-
learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways) [2]
[http://www.sott.net/article/264152-Warfare-was-uncommon-
amon...](http://www.sott.net/article/264152-Warfare-was-uncommon-among-hunter-
gatherers-study)

~~~
ap22213
Recently I read Pinker's "Better Angels" [1]. Using archeological records, he
argues that dying from a violent death was extremely likely in hunter gatherer
societies.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature)

------
Vivtek
The frustrating thing to me is that this article simply shows _that_ a
medieval peasant got more vacation time than I do - but doesn't say anything
at all about _why_ , even though it's in the title.

------
ommunist
The thing is that medieval concept of time was not linear. So we cannot really
compare how medieval peasants perceived their leisure time with perception of
the modern worker. It is like comparing cabbages with golf balls. They are
both round, right? I also strongly disagree with the author where it comes to
fulfilment. In many cases work is more fulfiling than leisure. What would be
really worthy to compare is average length and intensity of copulation, family
sizes. But scientific approach has no methods for such s comparison. Yet.

------
gbog
"His diet and personal hygiene left much to be desired."

Does it means these poor people that happen to be our ancestors had a faint
body odor surrounding them? Can we stop with this crasiness? We are animals,
animals have "body odor", and it have been considered a good thing for a long
time.

Every time I hear about personal hygiene I remember this American girl who was
learning Chinese with me in a university in south China. She was there on the
behalf a sort of NGO and her goal was to "teach Chinese personal hygiene". She
was talking about "spreading the use of perfume and deodorant" and such
things.

So now we have no more colonization, but we still have missionaries, and
hygiene missionaries. And they still do harm.

(Because yes, abuse of perfumes and deodorant IS harmful in many respects)

So, to come back OT, it is ok to wonder if middle-age peasants had more free
time, and if their life was pleasant (I guess it was not), but please let our
own crasiness out of the discussion.

We are the anti body age, anti-body hair, anti-body odor, shaved-porn-age
(which is anti-sex), etc. We have our crasiness too. It is very optimistic to
believe we are less crasy than the Middle-Age. And God knows Middle-Age was
crasy...

~~~
ef4
Only someone living in the relative safety of a hygienic society would assume
the point of that statement is _smell_.

Medieval peasants _died_ from their lack of hygiene.

~~~
gbog
I know that.

But, without context, if you hear about someone that his "personal hygiene
left much to be desired", it just means "he stinks", right?

Then when you write about Middle-Age peasants who died for some lack of
understanding of contagion mechanism, you do not write "personal hygiene left
much to be desired", unless you want to be ironic, sarcastic, or whatever
figure de style you are trying to add.

------
socialist_coder
I was thinking about this the other day- why don't some start ups implement a
4 day workweek? That would be a huge incentive for me to join.

Yes, it's less productive, but with 33% more weekend think about how happier
the employees would be.

I would love to try this with my startup once we get into the profitable
stage.

~~~
andy_boot
dont treehouse do that? [http://ryancarson.com/post/21708810513/4-day-
week](http://ryancarson.com/post/21708810513/4-day-week)

------
maxinem
In Guns Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond, I don't recall the exact quote but it
is stated that the advent of agriculture with its seasonal work gave those in
command a labor pool to use for fighting armies during the low-agriculture
work seasons.

------
alexeisadeski3
The average American adult works 24.99 hours per week.

Just sayin...

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/how-average-
america...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/how-average-american-
adult-spends-24-hours-each-day)

------
michael_michael
The BLS study linked in the article is from 1996. Anyone have a more current
source on average vacation time for US workers?

------
andyidsinga
that article suffers from the same fallacy as the ol 'back on your heads'
joke: \-- a guy dies and goes to hell. upon arrival, the devil allows him to
pick one of three rooms where he will then spend eternity.

in room one, people are being devoured by horrible beasts. in room two, people
are being burned alive ( thats harsh). in room three, everyone is up to their
waist in the smelliest, most putrid, disgusting shit he ever encountered --
but they're chit-chatting away, drinking coffee and having donuts. after a
brief reflection, the guy chooses the room with waist deep shit, coffee and
donuts.

a few minutes late the devil comes back and yells "alright scumbags, everyone
back on your heads". \--

...in medieval times you got one of the three rooms with the occasional coffee
and donut break.

nowadays, in our briefer vacations we can be __ON A BOAT __mf 'er - don't you
ever forget! :):):)

------
ams6110
Should be tagged [opinion]. This is not a news piece.

~~~
D9u
The fact that our elected representatives have voted themselves so many perks,
as well as raises, highlights the double standard which has become prevalent
in the USA.

Exempt from the Obama care fiasco, retirement eligibility after a ridiculously
short period of employment, an enviably short work "year."

It makes me wonder why I didn't go into politics...

~~~
rweba
Lawmakers already had health insurance so the Affordable Care Act didn't
really affect them in any substantial way.

In general the ACA won't have a huge immediate impact for those who already
have health insurance.

~~~
D9u
And those without health care insurance can presently walk into any community
health center to receive subsidized health care free of charge. Even illegal
aliens can get free health care right now, so how will the ACA affect those
without health care insurance?

