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Notes -
Sorry, I don't credit this whole 'everyone before 1950 was a toothless withered crone with 800 diseases by the age of 22 and wore nothing but filthy rags' narrative. Because that's just not how people live.
If you look at totally primitive hunter gatherer tribes on remote islands, guess what. They have colour and culture and ornament. Even when they need to go to extreme lengths to make and maintain those things. They find a way, because people always find a way to express themselves, even in poverty. Would dirt-poor medieval peasants really be willing to spend what would have been a very large amount of money on dyed and colored clothes according to the fashions of the period and location, even knowing their clothes would just be grey rags in two months? I doubt it.
I've read that medieval workers averaged 1600 hours annually, while modern people work 1900 hours, and industrial revolution-era workers put in 3000+ (https://tudorscribe.medium.com/do-you-work-longer-hours-than-a-medieval-peasant-17a9efe92a20). The horror stories about the wretched condition of peoples teeth and health in premodern times I've come across also seem to mostly come from the industrial age. I suspect that Malthusianism is partly to blame for declining standards, but also the power that capitalists and landowners gained over the commonfolk. Medieval economic systems were chaotic and inefficient, but they served to protect the peasantry against the ruling class through their illegibility. As the economy became more streamlined and efficient, it also gave the powerful greater leverage over the common people. The maximization of profitability for those at the top led to the sacrifice of complex arrangements that satisfied a broader array of needs for those at the bottom.
On a similar note, I've come to believe that medieval peasants weren't necessarily super different from tribalists in their economic engagement, and also that the distinction between hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, etc. is somewhat misleading, since most societies derived their nourishment from a motley of sources. Medieval people fished, foraged, hunted, etc., too, and many hunter-gatherers I've read about seem to have engaged in some amount of cultivation, so the categories aren't entirely discrete. In Seeing Like A State, it seems to be indicated that primitive peoples, including medieval peasants, had a complex arrangement of nutrient sources, which depended on access to farms, forests, and streams, but as society became streamlined and living spaces monopolized, they were forced into factories and workshops and fed mono-diets of grain. From there, various vitamin deficiencies and rapid tooth decay ensued.
The late medieval French peasant had a decent gig if you don't mind bone crushing material poverty. As in, "the-roof-can-be-lifted-to-eavesdrop-outside" poverty. "Manure-on-the-floor-because-livestock-sleeps-with-you-in-winter" poverty. "Your-second-son-will-be-homeless-vagrant-shepherd" poverty.
It would be nice if Keynes had been right, and we could have collectively said "okay, let's stop the hedonic treadmill there and just chill more going forward", but that's not the way status competition works. The peasants weren't industrious because medieval society wasn't wired to reward productivity with status; ours is.
Apparently it was pretty bad in Poland too. The following is about XVIII, so it's not even medieval period...
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