Chapter 1859 The Vanishing Nobility (Monthly Ticket Request!!! Please

Chapter 1859 The perishing nobles (please vote for me!!! Please subscribe!!! Please recommend!!!)

Marx is so depressed!

He really didn't want to kill anyone, he just wanted to escape, but for some reason, things turned out like this.

At this time, Spider-Man Women also joined the battle. Unlike Gwen and Peter, she was the rational one. Peter doesn't actually rely on strategy to fight, and he doesn't have any strategy, just one - quick reaction!

His reaction speed is even faster than his own thoughts, so when he is fighting, he will talk endlessly. It is not that he really wants to say those things, but he starts involuntarily. To put it simply, he is out of his mind.

The same goes for his battles, he doesn't observe the enemy, formulate a strategy, and then go to war. He always rushes forward and starts fighting first! After a while, I will naturally find a way. He is a purely talented player, whose talent is stronger than his consciousness.

Gwen, on the other hand, is relatively more stable. She does not have the powerful reaction ability of Peter. She is just an ordinary girl. She also learned how to fight from the Kingsman agent. It is the most orthodox fighting method. She observes the enemy and analyzes the enemy's behavior. Weaknesses, observe the environment, and find a way to fight that is beneficial to you.

Never reckless.

In fact, her training results are so good that Kingsman even hopes to recruit her to become a new gentleman... Kingsman has also been reforming in recent years. There was no way, Kingsman had to change.

For a hundred years, Kingsman has been recruiting only elites from the British aristocracy since World War I. It was okay at first. After all, after World War I and before World War II, the British aristocracy was still very powerful. There are many elites.

But with the adjustment of the world structure after World War II, the British aristocracy began to decline as a whole!

With castles, manors and servants, elegant and polite, these are people's impressions of British aristocrats. British aristocrats have always been the favorites of pretenders, but some people should have noticed that there are basically not many aristocrats nowadays. There is a saying that the nobles took the lead and were wiped out during the First World War. But this is not the case. The reason why the nobles disappeared is actually taxation. This is actually a widely circulated joke, saying that the British aristocracy had a sense of honor, was very brave, and was at the forefront of fighting, so it suffered the most casualties in the war, and was even wiped out in the First World War. Judging from later statistics, in World War I, 6 million people participated in the war, 720,000 died, and the civilian mortality rate was 12.5%. The mortality rate of the officer class is as high as 20%. After the war, the British directly attributed this to the fact that the officers were mainly from aristocratic backgrounds, had a sense of honor, and fought bravely, so they died more. But if you think about it carefully, Britain has fought countless wars. In almost all wars, the casualty rate among civilians was high. Why did the casualty rate among nobles suddenly increase during World War I? In the past, nobles had no sense of honor, but during the "World War I", their sense of honor suddenly exploded?

This is obviously illogical. In fact, if you understand the Western war model, you will know where the problem lies. One hundred years before the First World War, the main form of Western warfare was "line infantry", which is commonly known as "queuing to shoot". At that time, the rifles had low accuracy and slow shooting speed, so they needed more people. The soldiers walked forward in a row, with the commander in front controlling the speed. When the two sides approached within the shooting range, they held their guns level and fired at each other according to the commander's command. Whoever can no longer bear the casualties first will withdraw first, and the other side wins.

Everyone, pay attention to the man on horseback in the front. He is an officer, usually a noble. When the troops advanced, he walked in front to control the speed. During the march, the soldiers carried their guns on their shoulders. When they were about to enter the shooting range, they would stroll to the edge of the queue. The soldiers would lay their guns flat and then fire at the command of the commander. Before World War I, Europe was engaged in "aristocratic wars" with each other, which was very decent. In battle, the commander will not be directly targeted, so even though the commander is wearing a very cool uniform and riding a horse to give orders, no one will shoot him, but the soldiers will attack each other. Nobles are not killed, they are captured. Everyone knows from watching the TV series "A Song of Ice and Fire" that after a noble there is caught, everyone's first reaction is to ask for a ransom instead of killing them directly. Most of the nobles in Europe are related by blood. Even if they don't have a common blood relationship, they may share a mistress.

Therefore, this set of "no killing officers" rules has been maintained for more than a hundred years, so that we now look at the war at that time as very strange. In modern warfare, officers are afraid of being seen by others and becoming targets. It was just the opposite at that time. The officers were ostentatious because they were afraid that the other party wouldn't see them. If they couldn't see them, it would be bad to shoot them as civilians. It was not until World War I that the situation suddenly changed. At the beginning, it was just like before. The noble officers rode tall horses and walked in front, dressed like majestic roosters, leading the soldiers from their hometowns to the front line. When we arrived at the front line, everyone moved forward in a neat queue, with the noble officers walking in front to control the speed of the queue. But this time it was different. We didn't see where the enemy was. We saw bullets falling from the sky like raindrops, and those at the front fell one after another.

Routinely, rifles should be fired directly, so how come bullets are falling from the sky? This is the characteristic of the First World War. At that time, rifles were no longer the low-precision muzzle-loading rifles of the Napoleonic era, but were updated to breech-loading rifles with an outrageous range (the rifles of that time are still used as sniper rifles in the Middle East), and there were also the latest large-scale Maxims. At that time, the range of rifles had reached a terrifying one kilometer. You can try to look at things one kilometer away. Do you find that you can't see people clearly at all? Of course, it was also unclear more than a hundred years ago. In fact, there was no need to see at all.

Just wait for the opponent's army to enter the pre-determined position. After the commander observes with a telescope, everyone adjusts the scale and raises the gun to the sky together. Countless bullets whizzed and began to harvest lives. But this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that when the war started, the officers continued the spirit of "classical warfare" as before, continued to dress in strange clothes, and walked in front of the queue. Every time a sudden wave of bullets rained, the people walking in the front were often shot out, and the officers were gone. The same is true for the confrontation between the two sides. The officers continued to walk in front as usual. I thought the enemy would not attack me, but I didn't expect that they would open fire at a distance of one kilometer. I couldn't see each other, and those who walked in front were immediately useless. Later, British officers stopped walking in front and hid in the middle. If they saw that the situation was not good, they would retreat quickly.

Therefore, the casualty rate of officers in the early stage of the war was a bit outrageous. When the news was passed back to the country, everyone was confused. According to Western tradition, every family of a fallen soldier would be told "your child fought very bravely", but the real situation was that they were killed without seeing anyone (most of the dead soldiers in World War I died without seeing the enemy).

Although the casualties were larger, they were only 20%, and there was no serious injury at all. The British used to be like Americans. The upper class gave birth to children like giving birth to cubs, and three was the standard. It was precisely because of the large number of children that the youngest son often had no inheritance rights, was extremely poor, and then ran away (in the end, he was often more promising than the eldest son who relied on his parents). It was also mentioned in the Debrett Report that about one-tenth of the nobles lost their first heir at that time, so they had to let the second heir take over. That is to say, the war did not have much impact on property and inheritance of titles.

So where did the British aristocracy go? They died of poverty. With the development of the economy, the common people in Britain gradually awakened and began to unite to make trouble. So the government accepted more and more common people into the parliament. At this point, everyone may wonder, is it okay not to accept common people? It is not impossible, but at that time, Europe was surging with revolutions, and the king and queen of neighboring France had been beheaded. If you were a king or a noble, would you be panicked? So all countries are slowly accepting the common people - talk about it nicely, don't revolutionize our lives. In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, power slid to the House of Commons little by little. Now there is no House of Lords. The British parliamentary debates we see on TV are actually debates in the House of Commons. In the late 19th century, the social movement in Britain was in full swing. In order to ease social conflicts and prevent ordinary people from not being able to survive, the government began to improve social welfare, such as providing old-age care, medical insurance and other things for the people. This bill is also quite interesting, called the "People's Budget Bill".

But if you want to give money to the poor, where will the money come from? It just so happens that the voice of the nobles has declined, and everyone began to calculate on them. In 1894, the UK passed the inheritance tax, which was to collect 8% inheritance tax from those with assets exceeding 1 million pounds. Later, it kept rising, 15%, 40%, 50%, and as high as 60% in 1939. Not only that, but also greatly increased the land tax. When the bill was mentioned to the parliament, the House of Commons was of course happy and passed it smoothly. The nobles in the House of Lords understood at a glance that this was sharpening their knives towards us, so they decisively rejected it. The two houses fought back and forth over this matter, and those great intellectuals we are familiar with, such as Adam Smith, Ricardo, etc., all made a lot of remarks criticizing the nobles as parasites. After a debate, the nobles finally lost the upper hand. Slowly, various taxes became more and more severe. The main business of the nobles is land. Now the country is staring at their land every day, which is naturally extremely painful. They can't run away, and they can't afford to pay taxes.

Moreover, each noble had a huge fixed expenditure, servants needed to be hired, castles needed to be repaired, and various social activities were required. Now, with the increasing tax expenditures, most nobles became unable to make ends meet and had to sell their estates, dismiss their slaves, and their industries became smaller and smaller. The most severe one was the inheritance tax. Most of the property of noble estates existed in the form of land. Every time a noble died and the family had to change the inheritance, a large number of properties would be sold to raise high inheritance taxes.

How much impact did property tax and inheritance tax have on British nobles? From 1809 to 1879, 88% of British millionaires were land nobles. Soon, from 1880 to 1914, it dropped rapidly to 33%. More than half of the nobles died of poverty in these 20 years. During the most tense period of World War II, the income tax rate reached a terrifying 97.5%, and the inheritance tax was as high as 65%. Many old nobles went bankrupt directly after the war. Some people may say that this is not right. Isn't it said that inheritance tax is very difficult to collect? How did Britain do it? This is partly because the British are serious about their work and have always been determined and motivated to collect taxes. (Who doesn’t take collecting taxes seriously?)

On the other hand, it was also related to the lack of "globalization" at that time. Most of the assets were real estate, such as manors, farms, mines, and castles. They couldn't escape even if they wanted to. There were no tax havens, tax planning, and tax saving plans, so tax evasion was impossible, and no one studied tax saving (philosophy and art were more popular at that time).

The nobles made their fortunes through military merit and parasitized on the land. Some nobles held on to the land and were harvested by inheritance tax and income tax; others invested in mining and cotton textiles and barely survived the first industrial revolution. However, the second industrial revolution broke out in the United States, and some nobles did not run over and were also harvested. Many British nobles and financiers invested in the United States and were ready to continue to be parasites in the New World. Unexpectedly, the Americans played dirty with them. The Americans were very good at playing bonds, and in the early days they mainly cut the British money by issuing bonds.

How to cut the British leeks? First, find a concept to issue bonds at a low price, such as issuing bonds for building railways, and then speculate on the bonds themselves. When the British see that it is profitable, they rush in and speculate together, and then the Americans cash out and leave. The British can't find a buyer and the bonds explode. After the explosion, the bonds become waste paper, and the Americans will collect them back, convert debt into equity, hold them for a long time, and do value investment. Hold them for a hundred or eighty years, and these bonds can be used as mortgages when needed. So every few years in the United States, there was a major financial crisis, and a large number of stocks fell to waste paper. People thought that the United States was going to be cold, but the British died of poverty, and they were cut by the Americans.

In the process of the British government and the Americans constantly encroaching on the nobles, the old nobles were also looking for ways to survive, but only a few of them succeeded in transformation. Everyone should not have thought that the nobles were worried about their livelihoods at that time, and they were worried every day that the little wealth left by their ancestors would be completely gone. This matter has become an entertainment topic for the British. There are often reports that a certain baron's castle was rented to a pornographic company to make movies to pay property taxes. Most of the fallen nobles have now become ordinary people. When they are picking up girls, they may brag about their titles and family crests, but at other times they work with everyone.

So in fact, the "first generation of nobles" followed the old king to fight everywhere, and they might be quite good at fighting. But in the later period, when the nobles divided the territory and enjoyed themselves, they boasted too much. What "noble etiquette" and "chivalry" are just circle cultures compiled by the victors of the war. In the later period, the British titles have been clearly marked with prices, so what nutrition can the content have? Under the glamorous surface of Western nobility and religion, the evil of human nature is hidden. Therefore, the people are happy to see the establishment of tax laws to cut the wallets of the nobles, and cutting off a noble may benefit one side.

As a result, the number and quality of the nobles have directly dropped to a very pitiful level.

Kingsman is increasingly stretched to select people from this group, so the reform has already begun.

First, the group is changed from nobles to all-class selection, and women are also included in the selection group.

Outstanding people like Gwen will naturally be included in the selection targets.