The average peasant makes one crown a month, a skilled craftsman about one crown a week, a Lord Magister (when available for hire) about two crowns a day.
That's actually less wealth disparity than I expected. A skilled craftsman makes four times more than a peasant, and a Lord Magister makes fifteen times more than a craftsman and sixty times what a skilled peasant makes*. A factor of sixty is a good chunk, but a Lord Magister is just about as expensive a hire you can find**. So a factor of sixty to reach the top of the payscale is not too bad (payscale, not income. You can have more income, but it's not gonna be from getting payed.
*That's assuming they work seven days out of the eight day week, which may or may not be accurate. A peasant definitely works weekends, and probably longer hours, though also quite differently distributed, with peaks during sowing and harvest. On the other hand, LM work has a good chance of being more dangerous, though not all postings.
**It's even mentioned in the post,
when available. Hiring an LM requires connections and favor, or else enough money to be relevant on the state level to 'buy' the connection. LMs are strategic resources.
Of course, peasant can mean everything between 'basically a slave' and 'affluent middle class with a bunch of hired workers', depending on their rights, the quality of the land and whether they own it. I think the 'average peasant' in the empire is someone who owns their land/animals*, but doesn't have any workers beyond their family. That fits the locals of Mathilde's fief**, and it came up in the context of what money mean for them, so we can probably take them as a good guide***. I'd put them as lower-middle class, with laborers being the lower class incomes.
*in the sense that they're not paying money to some landlord to rent the land/animals in addition to the tax to the local lord. That tax is often also considered a consequence of renting the land, but you could have an additional layer of ownership there. Peasants can and do their land, as seen when Roswita sold the Hunter's Hills, but they can also be owned in bulk, because the EIC was able to buy up a ton.
**They're technically shepherds
***Actually, they're probably somewhat poorer, because the land is pretty bad, made up for partially by the fact that they have much less gribbly related costs****.
**** Though the impact of that is less on pure money, and more quality of life. Saving money because you don't need to replace a missing sheep is nice, but saving the heartache of a missing Timmy is much better.
So, who does that compare to today? Well, obviously that's super complicated, so the following will be extremely rough numbers*, but I found them helpful to put it into a more familiar perspective. Take them as a qualitative rather than quantitative statement.
Lower-Middle Class is 30-50k**. A skilled craftsman craftsman is four times that, at 120k-200k, which is the range of skilled professional today too. And Lord Magister get something like 1.5 to 3 million, which is a pretty nice sum. You definitely get higher paying jobs, but making the comparison is fraught***. After looking at it, it's less far from what we have today than I initially thought.
*Problems: Buying power isn't equivalent, costs have shifted, it's an ideologically hot question so numbers must be suspect, the values here are from the USA and a quick google, and probably things I haven't even considered.
**We can expect a range at least as big based on land, climate, and so on.
***The population is very different, and it's also the point where money is only part of the payment, and I can't find good numbers for those jobs anyway. As a rough idea, I looked at top athlets, since that was the job with the highest income that's 'payment'. I found a list of top 50 athlets who've made more than 30mil over their careers, and calling that 10 years, you also have 3/mil at minimum, though whether they made it for sporting or promoting can vary from 90/10 to 10/90, and the money for promition kind of doesn't fit the 'base payment' we've been looking at here. In comparison, a famous author can make 10mil+ per year, but that income is more like landholding than money for labor.
But what does that 60 to 1 ratio mean for the wealth of a LM when compared to the nobility. Well, assuming a 10% tax rate, you'd need the income 600 peasants, or a population of roughly 2000. That's a good chunk more than a knight would have access to*, but probably a bit less than a baron. Which works out pretty well for their general social status. A magister is supposed to be treated as nobility, so we can put them as knight equivalent. And then you have the LM as one step up, having an income not too far off from a baron.
* As a rough estimate, I'd put a knight at 400. A number of villages, but no proper town. Mathilde the knight has poor land and therefore fairly low income, but also doesn't need to pay for horses or anything, and is rich for other reasons anyway.
Of course, the real money is never in your personal labor. A LM after wealth could easily create the seed for investment, and would have or could make the connections for investment opportunities*. And anyone who reaches LM would have enough Great Deeds to get a barony***. The only reason Mathilde isn't the perfect example is that she did it as a journeywoman and sort of by accident.
*A magister would as well, see Regimand and his chain of hotels. Those scenes always read to me like having something like that is pretty standard for the Greys, and since they're the most restricted, probably the other orders as well. If you're a magister, you can become one of the idle rich. Maybe not mega rich, but you can definitely reach the point where you work when and if you want to**. Being a Lord Magister just makes it easier.
**Setting aside social pressure like with the Greys, but even there it won't be too difficult to find something they'll count as contributing you don't mind doing.
***1 for knight, 2 for the promotion to Baron. My impression is that LM requires
sustained excessive awesomeness. It's not enough to manage one impossible thing, you have to do it a whole bunch. That's why I'm assuming an LM has at least 3 Great Deeds to spend.
