[Retric]

What you’re missing here is how many new productive activities today like exercise or a multi hour commute basically didn’t exist back then. Doing laundry is nominally the push of a button, except you also need to buy laundry detergent and pay the electric bill etc.

The number of hours the average American spends working, traveling to or from productive locations, shopping, exercise, medical care, cleaning, doing bills/taxes/DMV etc and you quickly get 100+ hour weeks for the people working a nominal 40 hour week but often far more year round. We even sacrificed the traditional breaks by eating in our cars to be more efficient.

Meanwhile a peasant may be working long days in the summer subtracting ~4 hours of food, break, nap but they also cut back when days became shorter. Meanwhile today people just turn on the lights and keep working even chronically sacrificing sleep to work more.

PS: People are better off today in so many ways, but don’t forget not everyone was a peasant back then.