The average American works more today then a medieval peasant.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/medieval-peasants-vacation-m...

We live in a time of immense wealth, but not leisure.

>The average American works more today then a medieval peasant

The average medieval peasant was illiterate, slept on straw, had to work if they were sick and God forbid they broke a bone they would likely have the bone set incorrectly handicapping them to varying degrees for the rest of their life.

The average American has air conditioning, electric or gas heat, a smartphone, watches television several hours a week and rarely has to worry about food poisoning or getting intestinal parasites.

Give up the air conditioning, the car, the 3000$ laptop every 2-3 years, the 1200$ smartphone every 18-24 months, the Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/Spotify subscriptions, never purchase a single item that is (or contains a component that was) imported, the exotic vacations 0.5-4x a year, the 4-9$ cup of coffee 1-3x a day and that food delivery service you use 1-7x a week, running water and all electricity at your residence and you too could work considerably less.

So, like van life?

I'm taking it you've never been to subs like /r/vandwellers where it's all

"what do you do for a washing machine"

"what do you do for internet"

"what do you do for heating"

"what do you do for air conditioning"

"what is your toilet setup"

"what do you cook on"

"what sort of PV system do you have"

This is only true because the authors are trying to use a capitalist definition of work to a precaptialist society. There was a huge amount of time spent on household tasks like mending clothes, preparing food, doing repairs, spinning clothes etc.

The article also talks about how peasants took frequent rests, but this is because they were doing extremely physically demanding work, not because they had a chill schedule.

Edit: A great example is that in Mexico and the American Southwest one of a woman's traditional tasks was grinding corn by hand, which could take up to 5 hours for her families supply. Other areas of the world that ate grains and didn't have access to mills would have had to spend a similar amount of time.

Idk, Americans also spend a lot of time on things that are necessary like that:

Cleaning, paying taxes, commuting, exercise (because most workers don't get it at work anymore), buying and cooking food, taking care of house and car, laundry, etc.

I huge amount of time is spent on those things and that wasn't included in the 40 hours.

You're right that I shouldn't have used the 40 hours in my first most as it isn't an apples to apples comparison. The fact remains though that in comparison people in first world countries today have much more time that doesn't have to be spent on productive tasks then people in most of history. Cooking food list in your example took much more time in the past, and cars require much less maintenance then a car.