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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7074664" data-attributes="member: 4937">In most cases, a medieval peasant only paid about 1/3rd of their income in taxes.&nbsp;&nbsp; Taxes only reached 50% of their income in Eastern Europe, where peasants tended to be more oppressed and had fewer rights.&nbsp;&nbsp; Your 12 c.p. per day might be about right, but they were probably paying only about 4 c.p. per day in taxes.&nbsp;&nbsp; You might be about right regarding 5 c.p. per day for subsistence, leaving a profit of 3 c.p. per day (or 1 c.p. per day in high tax regions).&nbsp;&nbsp; If that profit seems high to you.&nbsp; What you are neglecting is that the economy is agricultural, and so this assumes 'the weather is good' and 'the crops don't fail'.&nbsp;&nbsp; The medieval peasant wasn't in bad shape as long as that remained true, and had enough profit on his farm to weather a bad year every few years.&nbsp;&nbsp; The problems got critical in a hurry though when that wasn't true.&nbsp; The problem was exacerbated by the fact that taxes were negotiated fixed sums, and not percentages of income or expenditures, and so whether a good year or a bad year, taxes were supposed to be paid first and you lived off of what was left over.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7074664, member: 4937"] In most cases, a medieval peasant only paid about 1/3rd of their income in taxes. Taxes only reached 50% of their income in Eastern Europe, where peasants tended to be more oppressed and had fewer rights. Your 12 c.p. per day might be about right, but they were probably paying only about 4 c.p. per day in taxes. You might be about right regarding 5 c.p. per day for subsistence, leaving a profit of 3 c.p. per day (or 1 c.p. per day in high tax regions). If that profit seems high to you. What you are neglecting is that the economy is agricultural, and so this assumes 'the weather is good' and 'the crops don't fail'. The medieval peasant wasn't in bad shape as long as that remained true, and had enough profit on his farm to weather a bad year every few years. The problems got critical in a hurry though when that wasn't true. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that taxes were negotiated fixed sums, and not percentages of income or expenditures, and so whether a good year or a bad year, taxes were supposed to be paid first and you lived off of what was left over. [/QUOTE]

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