In honor of Labor Day: Who works harder, medieval serfs or modern Americans?

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Sunday September 01, 2013 · 4:49 PM PDT

2013/09/01 · 16:49

This piece at the Reuters blog got my attention this morning:

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.

-- Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you by Lynn Parramore

Not saying I'm looking to trade antibiotics for week-long wedding celebrations, but this should make us think about what we accept as progress.
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Everything You Need to Know About Teen Pregnancy

kvetchingyenta

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Tuesday March 19, 2013 · 9:28 AM PDT

2013/03/19 · 09:28

In the late 90s, I was a young, single, pregnant high school dropout- long before MTV aired the controversial reality shows that Kelli Goff believes make young women want to get pregnant, back when the teen pregnancy rates spiked inexplicably before dropping to where they are now- the lowest rates ever. (That epidemic you keep hearing about? Nonexistent.) Many people, like Mayor Bloomberg, think they can tell you how my story would end- I would live in poverty, sad and alone, while my friends had limitless freedom and age-appropriate marriages and white picket fences. “He” would leave me, nobody with a lick of self-respect or a dime to his name would ever want me, and my baby would be crying on a billboard somewhere as a cautionary tale for other wanton young hussies who didn’t make chastity pledges. Eventually my child would grow up only to fail from a lifetime of neglect at the hands of an incapable child parent, and I would tear my hair out and curse the day I ruined my life by becoming an Unwed Teenage Mother.

They would be wrong.

kvetchingyenta

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Saturday October 27, 2012 · 11:36 AM PDT

2012/10/27 · 11:36

Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under George W. Bush (and later health care lobbyist and failed Presidential candidate), presided over the destruction of Wisconsin’s social services program as governor of the state. His efforts are often termed a “success” by right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and even the mainstream media simply because welfare rolls were cut dramatically. But what really happened to those families that were cut off from the social safety net? Was welfare reform really a success, and for who?

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In honor of Labor Day: Who works harder, medieval serfs or modern Americans?

Everything You Need to Know About Teen Pregnancy

Tommy Thompson, Maximus, and Welfare Privatization in Wisconsin