Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 464325" data-attributes="member: 5724">I think your exaggerating a bit.  I've been doing some research into the medival period and have got a different picture. Its not as bleak as people tend to believe, but i dont think its as nice as your post seems to imply.When you look at the comparison of prices to labor (in england here) from 1210-1350 you'll start spiking around 1270 (ie. prices start going way up then down but not as far as before it went up and then back way up. kinda like a sawblade held at a 30 degree or angle).  Prices came WAY down like you seem to be talking about after the plague.during 1360-1520 (again in england) the price of wheat fell by about 40%.  the wages went up by 30% during the same period.  But once you get past that point wage index plummets.  by 1640 (england again) the wage index was down by 50%.  so i, reservedly, agree with you but standard of living includes a lot of things medieval people didn't have access to.  child mortality rates (up to, crap i cant remember exactly, something like 30-50%) of kids didn't make it past 12 years old, lack of medicines.. etc would make me more hesitant to try and compare our mondern standard of living to a medieval one.  If you want to compare a 3rd world agrarian standard of living it would probably be closer, but i would't be surprised if the medievals had it a bit better than our contemporaries there.we also don't have to contend with famine and plague (although aids may qualify, we'll have to look at it in a 100 years or so).  Food is the most volitile aspect of price/labor indexes.  It was so bad during the great famine of 1314-1316 that people were so hungry they'd dig up corpses and eat them. Not just eating the people who died, actually digging them up and eating them. *shudder* thankfully we dont have to deal with that.  It is almost inconceivable to me.  The middle ages were pretty good if you could avoid famine and disease.  You could do nicely for yourself and your family, but there was a tremndously greater threat of instability than now.anyway, its nice to see someone seems to be as nerdy as me! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  If anything i've said here seems too far off base, just drop me an e-mail and let me know the books you've been reading. I could be entirely wrong, wouldn't be the first time alas, and i always appreciate a good read!take care,joe b.<a href="mailto:suzi_and_joe@hotmail.com">suzi_and_joe@hotmail.com</a></blockquote>

Verification