In short, most peasant farmers must sharecrop at least some of their land, and on sharecropped land, extraction rates are on the order of 50% (for basically nothing in return).

lm28469 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> extraction rates are on the order of 50% (for basically nothing in return).

Hey that's pretty much what we have in Germany, probably even higher thanks to vat, capital gains, &c.

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multjoy 10 hours ago | parent [-]

You have roads, infrastructure, a social security system, hospitals, schools…

The peasant got nothing.

	▲	jalapenos 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not quite, there was social spending on things like (simple) roads and temples (which could double as schools), but obviously nothing close to today's (wealthy) standards.

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nosianu 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> for basically nothing in return

Basix protection and basic law? Sure, far from an ideal model we would have in mind today, the comparison is against a completely "free" society as in much much longer ago.

> must sharecrop at least some of their land, and on sharecropped land, extraction rates are on the order of 50% (for basically nothing in return).

Uhm... so half of an unknown number? That's also an unknown number then, and the very concrete "50%" means nothing.

I'm only complaining about the TL;DR, the original article is great. After reading it, I think there is no good TL;DR possible. There is too much to consider, actually reading that link seems and unavoidable if one actually wants to know. Would someone in two hundred years looking at average income in the US today as the one or two sentence TL;DR have a useful picture of what life is like in the US today?

	▲	jalapenos 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The rate floated around a lot by time period and domain, but 50% is a good approx figure.