Did the serfs get free housing under feudalism? Otherwise you can't really compare how much the serfs were taxed compared to how much people today spent on rent.
>Considering there’s all the other taxes like council tax, income tax, vat and whatever else,
All of that funds social services and the welfare state, something that serfs didn't.
edit:
...that serfs didn't get
That's what the third to a half of what they produced paid for, the right to live and work on the lord's land.
> All of that funds social services and the welfare state, something that serfs didn't
No, but what "welfare state" did exist, such as transport infrastructure, was paid for by the lord, rather than directly by the peasant.
You realize that the "rent" you pay includes the cost of the land, as well as the actual building on top. My point is that comparing whatever serfs paid and got in return (ie. only access to the land) and what the typical renter today gets (ie. access to the land and a finished building) isn't comparable.
>> All of that funds social services and the welfare state, something that serfs didn't
>No, but what "welfare state" did exist, such as transport infrastructure, was paid for by the lord, rather than directly by the peasant.
whoops my bad, missed a "get" at the end of that. The complete sentence was supposed to be:
>All of that funds social services and the welfare state, something that serfs didn't get
I'm pretty sure most serfs were renting pre-existing dwellings.
And I'm not sure what you're getting at with this welfare state stuff. Yes we get taxed and receive things in return but so did the serf. The only difference is the serf typically only paid one tax for everything that also included his rent. Currently, people are paying the same amount as the serf did just for rent (30-50% or more) yet the landlord has no responsibility to maintain roads and any of the other basic services he did back in the day. Instead the worker has to pay for these things on top of what he is already paying the landlord. The only benefit the modern worker is getting over his medieval counterpart is better quality housing.
On the other hand, serfs were also bound up in much more obligations than simply providing part of their income to the lord (e.g. it wouldn't be the lord building and maintaining the road that he had to provide). And they couldn't get up and leave, even in principle, if they had a bad lord.
Yours is the same misunderstanding that leads people to mistakenly think $40k shipping container houses are an answer to the housing crisis. It was always about land - its intrinsic scarcity and who gets to hoard it. Probably 10% of my rent is actually paying for the building.
Mayfair is hoarded by one man and his "right" to its rents stems entirely from violence - his ancestor helping William the Conqueror conquer England. In this sense feudalism was kept around the whole time - like herpes.
Control and ownership of land dictates the flow of parasitically extracted wealth - it's much the same whether I'm paying 2900 per month to a landlord in Maida Vale who doesn't have to work thanks to me (but somehow still can't be bothered to call out a plumber) or if I'm paying 1/3 of my income as a peasant to my lord.
>All of that funds social services
Social services have been severely eroded in the UK while the % spent on rent and taxes has sharply increased. The NHS is a wreck compared to what it used to be in the early 2000s and the social housing list is DECADES long.
These already eroded institutions are a hangover from the decades when unions has real power in the UK and in the next 10 years they will be eroded still further.
That might be the case, but the apples to oranges comparison by the parent poster is hardly convincing evidence.
>Social services are being severely eroded in the UK while the % spent on rent and taxes has sharply increased. The NHS is a wreck compared to what it used to be in the early 2000s and the social housing list is DECADES long.
That can't possibly be due to other factors, like the aftereffects of the covid-19 pandemic, or all the baby boomers retiring and requiring way more medical care? Not to mention that adjusting for inflation, population size and demographic structure, NHS spending is actually up since the early 2000s[1].
[1] https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the-past-present-...
More like satsumas to oranges. Land is still the key component of wealth extraction irrespective of whether the rents come with a house or without.
>That can't possibly be due to other factors, like the aftereffects of the covid-19 pandemic, or all the baby boomers
No, because those are not other factors they are scapegoats. Covid didn't ruin the NHS - that had been happening for years - covid just exposed the underlying frailty of the system and was an excuse to jam even MORE corruption into the system.
Baby boomers retiring is not responsible for an increasing share of the country's income being dedicated to rents.
I'm excited to see what kind of new scapegoats our leaders will come up with to rally the simple-minded once covid becomes distant history and the boomers all die off. Hopefully we won't get a re-run of that "it's all the [ insert ethnicity here ]'s fault" thing from the 1930s.
What. What do you mean by "free housing"? The serfs paid a land lord a portion of their labour in exchange for housing on "their" land. How is that different from the arrangement under capitalism today?
