This isn’t entirely true - someone calculated that, on a good year, a peasant could only work 150 days a year towards the rent of their own farmland. Then they have to actually work that land, take care of their animals, and manually do basically every industrial process we take for granted to get food in their belly. They didn’t work 150 days a year then go off with a cheque that will sort them out for the rest of the year.

Source: adamsmith.org/…/medieval-peasants-really-did-not-…