While the rich and powerful would be devasted by a decreasing population, how would the common person fair? The best example we have is The Black Death, which swept across Europe in the late 1340s and early 1350s- latter half of 1348 and well into 1349 in Britain- and killed somewhere between one third and half of the population.

The economy was mostly agrarian at the time, with the majority of people either being farm day-labourers or leaseholders, who in turn paid the nobles in some combination of cash, labour, and a cut of the goods they produce. Being a leaseholder had its benefits, with the potential to be a somewhat wealthy peasant, making it a fairly coveted position. But the dynamic quickly changed when the labour pool shrank.

The nobility derived most of their wealth from the land, which they owned all of by birthright, collecting from the leaseholders rent, a share of what they produce, and their labour for the lands the nobility manage themselves, and then sell whatever grain, meat and other products they can reap from the land and its tenants. Given this, demand for labour was roughly static, as they wanted to work as much of the land as possible.

But the lowest end of the labour pool saw the highest death rate, with some villages losing over half their peasants to the plague, translating into the survivors becoming the most valuable commodity of realms across Europe- land was worthless if it sat idle. Wages increased substantially- double or more by most accounts- and the cost of living was well contained by a lack of demand, making for what must have been the largest transfer of wealth from rich to poor history has recorded, all for simply surviving one of the greatest catastrophes humans have ever known.

As John Hatcher put it in his 2008 book The Black Death: “The enhanced power that peasants and laborers derived from their scarcity was to prove a potent driving force behind revolutionary changes in economic and social institutions, including the decline of serfdom and feudalism, and a golden age for peasants and laborers.” *

Could we see similar results if we sent home the majority of guests who have arrived over the last few decades as we explain that diversity is not our strength? Our economy is much more complex now, and many jobs would be lost. But housing would be a lot more affordable, and we could stop outsourcing all our best jobs, so maybe we’d have a similar effect? It’s difficult to know for sure, but an increasing number of Canadians would like to run the experiment.

*Found on page 287. This book is the source for most claims about the history of The Black Plague.