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42 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5h \ on: Why Taxes Were So Hated in the Middle Ages econ
I think the case might be a bit overstated:
"Customary tributes and dues paid by vassals" sounds a bit like taxes to me, just at a different level.
"Revenues from personal estates" also seems to do a lot of work in the argument. Would taking a share of the peasants' crop output not be considered a form of taxation?
Agreed. My sense of the qualitative difference is that those taxes were customary, as opposed to arbitrary.
They didn't have a tax policy that was expected to change regularly and entirely at the discretion of the ruler.
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An interesting thing to consider is that even though in the medieval era, kings and emperors had more de jure power over their subjects, the de facto situation was probably a lot more decentralized and locally controlled than things are now. Even though we live in a democracy, I'd venture to guess that the medieval king had less control over a random peasant's everyday life than the President of the USA has over the average American citizen's life.
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I'm sure that's true
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