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.
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.
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.
Anyway... I think this analysis is shortsighted, for a start, you can't forgo the modern civilization because you can't have a home and you can't leave it, and if you're in it, there's a cost... And it's understood that the right to have somewhere to live is essential but you can't leave the city and get to a piece of land, land is not produced anymore and it belongs to the rich, you can't buy it, you can't raise cattle or chicken and you can't plant, so, you'll die.
And then everything else comes after this. Also, lets be honest, the level of education you need to even start pondering this you can't get either, because by then you'd already have had to have eaten and lived somewhere, and maybe you have bills and you can be arrested.. Not such a viable option. Then it's also probably a big fallacy that people can really live off of welfare policy goods, I don't know how it is in the USA, but here in Brazil I'm pretty sure what you get is barely enough for you not to live like a wild animal in middle of 'modern civilization'
Barely enough means enough but without extra things, right? I'm pretty sure a random medieval peasant would kill for a promise of being guaranteed not to die from hunger, always have shelter, have basic medical needs taken care of, not counting such things as free education, free communications, etc. I'm not saying we should let people die on the streets, just when you compare something to medieval, be aware how far we are removed from what happened there.
