Why do modern Britons work harder than medieval peasants?
Medieval economists tell us that peasants had to work only up to 150 days a year to feed their families. Anything up to a third of the year was covered by religious holidays. Whereas today, some people – especially those at the top and bottom of the jobs market – are working 48 or even 60 or more hours a week. And all of us in full-time work do so for at least 225 days a year. Despite two centuries of industrialisation and economic growth, debt-fuelled overconsumption has got us caught on a treadmill. We’ve been getting richer, but no happier, for decades. New communication technologies, plus the economic insecurity at the heart of our system, means many of us never really stop working. And as our communities lose their post offices, local shops, playing fields, banks, police stations and buses, it feels as if we are regressing. In terms of the fabric of community, it’s possible to wonder whether we are, in some ways, worse off than in the austerity years of the late 1940s. Yet policy-
