Chapter 741 840 Scam

The annual fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty court was roughly divided into two parts. One part was used by the court to maintain the daily operations of the dynasty, including royal family income, official salary, disaster relief and water conservancy, military border defense, etc.; the other part was given to the emperor for himself and the palace. overhead.

With the expansion of the foreign bureaucracy, the increase in lumi brought about by the rapid growth of the clan population, the increase in border defense expenditures caused by the decline of the military, and the continuous expansion of the size of the palace, the fiscal revenue of the imperial court could not meet the needs of expenditure, and began to A deficit occurs.

After this phenomenon occurred, although the emperors of the Ming Dynasty still adhered to the ancestral precepts and did not easily mine, they still had to compromise in the face of financial pressure that needed to be resolved.

Whenever the finances were short of money, the emperor would think about making money by opening mines, so the emperor would issue an order to open a mine, then the miners would cause trouble, and then issue an order to ban it after the chaos was suppressed. This became a lingering strange cycle of mineral mining in the Ming Dynasty.

"Actually, Wei Chen has always felt that whether the imperial court is opening a mine or a workshop, it should pay monthly wages to workers and craftsmen according to the wages on the market, instead of just hiring some people, and some people's labor is only used to pay the imperial court of corvee.

In particular, everyone in the imperial court actually supported the implementation of the One Whip Law, and the greatest benefit of the One Whip Law to the people was that they no longer had to worry about being drafted into service by the court, and could only farm with peace of mind.

In this way, in addition to income, each mine also has a fixed expenditure, and the remaining part is profit, that is, making money.

Let’s not talk about the official mines run by the court. If the mines are run by the private sector, the court can also tax the mines accordingly. At the same time, it can also supervise whether the mine owners treat the miners harshly.

You know, when miners cause trouble, it's mostly because they're treated badly.

In Wei Chen's view, the imperial court could exclude the imperial censors from the Metropolitan Procuratorate from inspecting various prefectures, find out the distribution of minerals, and list some of the mines that are easy to mine and large-scale as official mines. The imperial court can send personnel to be responsible for the mining, and the profits can be made internally and externally. library.

Some smaller mines can be contracted to private parties for mining, and the highest bidder wins through bidding.

The local government regularly sends personnel to inspect accounts, collect taxes, and verify the treatment of miners, so as to ensure that miners will no longer cause chaos."

Wei Guangde slowly expressed his thoughts. Although there was no change in the expression on Emperor Longqing's face, there was no turning back when he fired his bow. Wei Guangde could only finish what he said and make it clear.

Of course, Wei Guangde also had selfish motives on this issue, because once the imperial court approved the decree, he could openly intervene in mineral mining.

Before that, if he had intervened in the mines, it would not be as simple as doing business, because the court would not casually agree to the mining. Now most of the mine owners are mine thieves, and they will be tried in court once they are exposed.

If the imperial court contracts out mines, I will buy a few of them. In the future, my sons and grandsons can say loudly when they go out: "My family has mines."

Just thinking about it makes you feel energetic.

In his last life, Wei Guangde envied those coal bosses who made money every day and made money while lying down.

Of course, when the time comes, we will have to find nobles to help lobby the government and the public.

Last time, because of the incident in Jingying, Yan Yin was used as compensation. Wei Guangde also took the opportunity to introduce them to the business side, so that they no longer simply sold Yan Yin to the big salt merchants, but participated in the sharing.

As long as they participate, they will know the huge profit margins of salt merchants, and they can't be jealous whether they want to or not.

Who doesn’t love money?

Now that they have attracted people to do business, the next step is to use mining to continue to attract them to mining. In the future, when the minerals are produced, they will not have to build workshops to process them, and then use the commercial network to sell them.

A perfect cycle is created. As long as the nobles taste the sweetness, they will definitely discover the benefits. At that time, their eyes will gradually shift from the fields to industry and commerce.

Only with the establishment of industry and commerce can the conditions for commercial tax be levied.

Although there are many workshops and craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty now, they are all small and insignificant.

Because they are small, it is actually difficult to collect taxes because most of them are based on family-style production, with perhaps a small number of hired workers.

The large workshops in Jiangsu and Zhejiang all charge taxes based on the number of looms.

Therefore, it is not that there was no commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty as later generations said, but that the conditions were not met and it was difficult to collect it.

The taxes on salt, tea, iron and textiles levied by the Ming court were actually commercial taxes.

Of course, the current division of the four industries in the Ming Dynasty was actually problematic. It restricted the flow of people between various industries. By this time, it had actually restricted economic development.

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang divided the common people into four types of household registration, namely military households, civilian households, craftsmen households, and kitchen households, which were the four industries.

These four household registrations are the four professional statuses, and they are stipulated that descendants must inherit them from generation to generation and cannot be changed.

He divided the population according to occupation and did not allow people to change their identities. This was equivalent to stipulating in advance the proportional relationship between supply and demand for each product.

It was certainly beneficial to use this method in the early Ming Dynasty, as it could ensure a stable supply of products, which was crucial for a newly established dynasty.

However, Zhu Yuanzhang's design has a serious problem, that is, the proportional relationship between various professional identities may have been relatively good when he first designed it, but he could not ensure that people with every professional identity had a good relationship. If you persist, there is no way to ensure that people with different professional identities will reproduce at exactly the same rate.

After a little longer time, due to different reproduction rates due to various reasons, the population numbers of the four household registrations will appear.

If the population of a certain type of household registration increases significantly, while the population of other household registrations does not change much, this supply and demand balance will be broken.

In addition, some people who do not like their own business will go out to do other things, and the government cannot keep an eye on everyone for a long time. They must work according to the prescribed occupations, and the proportion of the four occupations is even more problematic.

This made the quasi-planned economy in the early Ming Dynasty, which was similar to that of later generations, increasingly unsustainable after operating for decades.

Although most of these people have become hidden households and are not on the official household register, they do exist after all.

That is why Wei Guangde deliberately blurred the household registration restrictions in his previous remarks, that is, whether it is a civilian household or a farmer household, or a craftsman household or a stove household, they can enter the mine to work and get paid.

Of course, in fact, most people in the folk nowadays don’t care much about household registration. Except for projects such as imperial examinations that need to be reported to the government, everyone is basically the same.

Of course, military households are not included because of their special nature, which is also the reason why military households fled in large numbers.

Wei Guangde knew that the Four Industries issue was a small matter from the perspective of later generations, but it was indeed a major matter related to the long-term stability of the country in the current Ming Dynasty, so he did not plan to propose changes for the time being.

If there were other time travelers who knew what he wanted to do, they would naturally tell him that what he wanted to do was actually more radical than Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng.

Gao Gong's reform ideas were actually quite narrow, that is, nothing else was changed, just rectifying the administration of officials and restoring the court to the situation in the early Ming Dynasty.

Compared to the early Ming Dynasty, it was indeed a very beautiful era.

Zhang Juzheng, on the other hand, focused on the present. He thought that since the problem had been discovered, he should find a way to solve it. If the tax and service system was not suitable, he should change to the one-whip system. If the government was overstaffed, he should implement the performance evaluation system to improve efficiency. If the river was blocked, he should dredge it. If the court had no money, he should survey the land in the country to increase income and find out the hidden land.

As a person who came up from below, he naturally knew about the things in the people. Although he knew that there was great resistance, he was willing to suppress the imperial power and force it because it would benefit the country and the people.

What Wei Guangde wanted to do was to use the concepts from later generations. He wanted to reform gradually from the root and erase all the inappropriate things set by Zhu Yuanzhang.

It was definitely not appropriate to want to leap from feudal society to socialist society in one step in the Ming Dynasty, so he should first move closer to capitalist countries.

Only when the economy developed could the financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty be resolved.

To put it bluntly, it was not that the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were stupid and did not know how to find money. They were all bound by the rules and regulations set by Zhu Yuanzhang.

The Ming Dynasty needed an emperor with courage and the courage to reform.

However, Wei Guangde knew that Emperor Longqing was not such a person, so he could only act cautiously and do it little by little. Even if he failed in the end, it didn't matter.

Wei Guangde said everything he wanted to say, but Emperor Longqing sat on the throne without saying a word.

Mining can actually be done with an imperial decree, without discussing with court officials, but judging from the results of each mining, it seems to end up causing a big incident.

Emperor Longqing was afraid of trouble. In order to collect some money, he forced the people to rebel and even had to pay money to quell the rebellion.

After weighing the pros and cons for a long time, Emperor Longqing said, "Let's do this, Shandai. Go back and write a charter for what you just said and give it to me. I will also think about it carefully. This matter is serious and cannot be concluded casually."

"As ordered."

Wei Guangde bowed his head and replied.

The emperor did not express his opinion, and Wei Guangde did not think it was a big deal. It was just a waste of words, and it did not cause any loss to him.

"Can you tell me the bottom line? How much of the court's income is from the royal family, how much is the military pay, and how the court's income is spent.

Although there are many memorials from the Ministry of Revenue, I feel overwhelmed after reading them."

Emperor Longqing asked again. He now feels that the royal family's expenses are a big problem, and a solution must be found as soon as possible.

Wei Guangde listened to the emperor's question, lowered his head and estimated again, and then said: "Of the national income, the royal family's expenses account for about 30%, the military pay is 20%, the palace is 10%, and the remaining 40% is the official's salary and various project expenses."

The Ming Dynasty not only supported a large population of royal family, but also a large number of officials and the groups that depended on them for survival.

Later generations said that the Ming Dynasty used tens of millions of people to support 100,000 officials. It seems that the proportion is not high, but in fact there are still a large number of temporary workers in the yamen, and they are actually supported by the people.

It's just that Zhu Yuanzhang set the establishment, and 100,000 people were only officials, but clerks and servants were not included.

Similarly, according to the rules set by Zhu Yuanzhang, the number of eunuchs in the palace was limited to 60.

60 people, this number is extremely incredible, but in fact this number only includes eunuchs with a certain grade, and does not include a large number of eunuchs without grades.

"The palace accounts for 10%? How much is that?"

Emperor Longqing only spends money, and from time to time he asks about the situation of his inner treasury, but he really has no idea how much silver the palace spends in a year.

"About two million taels."

Wei Guangde replied.

Emperor Longqing frowned again, two million taels? He recalled the number of silver he had ordered from the Ministry of Revenue several times before.

Yes, the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was not three million taels. The figure of three million taels was only the gold and silver revenue of the court, and did not include taxes in kind.

If calculated according to the true price of goods at that time, the Ming Dynasty's annual fiscal revenue should be between 20 and 30 million taels. This figure is roughly equivalent to the Kangxi Dynasty's annual treasury income of more than 40 million taels in the early Qing Dynasty.

As for Qianlong's time, the annual revenue of the treasury reached a maximum of 80 million taels of silver, which was related to inflation caused by the large inflow of silver.

After all, the price comparison between the Ming Dynasty and that time, but when it comes to food prices, one stone of food now costs less than one tael of silver, while in the Qianlong Dynasty it was one or two and a half, and the price has almost doubled.

The only difference may be that the clan policy of the Qing Dynasty was better than that of the Ming Dynasty, and it solved the clan problem very well.

Military expenditures accounted for more than half of the Qing government's fiscal expenditures in the middle and early stages, which was almost equivalent to all the Ming Dynasty's military expenditures and clan Lumi being used to support the army. The army also opened up territory for the Qing government during this period. Occupy a large area of ​​land.

In addition, there is the palace expenditure. Before the Qianlong Dynasty, the Qing court's palace expenditure was only a few hundred thousand taels per year, but it only increased to two million taels during the Qianlong Dynasty, which was comparable to that of the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, the expenses of the palace are also very high. After all, the palace is full of nobles, and food and clothing are the most expensive.

Although he felt that the expenses in the palace were too high, Emperor Longqing would not think of reducing expenses. That would be a disservice to himself and the people around him, and he could not do it.

However, if the clan could find a way to reduce the amount, it would be financially comfortable.

Of course, he soon came to his senses, and clan clan Lumi could only think about whether he really wanted to do it, fearing that his Qianqing Palace would be flooded with memorials from the feudal prince's palace the next day.

"When I was still in Yuzhuan, I remember asking you to find a way to solve the Lumi problem. I also mentioned this matter after I ascended the throne. Is there a charter now?"

Since he knew that the clan issue was a drag on the court, Emperor Longqing still wanted to ask Wei Guangde if he had any way to solve the matter.

"Your Majesty, the affairs of the clan are governed by the "Ancestor Instructions of the Emperor Ming Dynasty". It is really difficult to change it. Unless your Majesty is willing to change the regulations, such as running the clan's four industries so that they can support themselves and the court will no longer distribute Lumi, otherwise It’s difficult.”

In the past, court officials had also submitted many memorials, all involving clan reform, but except for Zhese, most of them were shelved because they all touched the policies set by Zhu Yuanzhang.

In addition, in order to appease the dissatisfaction of the clan and solve the shortage of Lumi, grains were transported from surrounding provinces. In short, whenever trouble occurred, we would find a way to send some Lumi there. It was nothing more than adding discounts and using treasure notes when distributing Lumi. Replace Lumi.

There were so many things that could be changed in the Ming Dynasty that Wei Guangde sometimes felt that he had no idea where to start.

But I know that none of these actions will get around Zhu Yuanzhang, the deceiver of his descendants.