"Your Majesty, do you also think that the opinion in the newspapers against the charges for compulsory education is correct, right?" Luo Zenan, as the Minister of the Propaganda Department, smiled bitterly. He has been criticized many times for the charges for compulsory education these days...

Luo Zenan smiled bitterly and said, "In fact, I also think that their articles are very reasonable. It is a word of logic. It is wrong to charge compulsory education fees. It is difficult to live a life of a small amount of silver dollars. 2 silver dollars are just one stone of white rice! And it is the price of the city. The price of rice in the countryside is at most seven or eight hundred small copper plates and one stone of millet. 2 silver dollars costs three stones of millet! Even if a mu of land is good for the weather, deducting various costs and taxes, you may not be able to get all the millet in a year..."

Use acre of land to support a child in school... This is nothing to the farmers in the Northeast collective farm. They have 20 acres of land per capita, and the tuition fee is twice as expensive. It is even more unfavorable for immigrants who grow rubber in Southeast Asia. They have incomes of seven or eight yuan a month, and most of the immigrants have no children. Most of the bachelors with families and families are successful people. They don’t have time to hope that their children will become illiterate. They probably think that the tuition fee of 2 yuan is too low, which is not enough to ensure that the children get the best education, right?

For the working class in Shanghai, Yingtian and Guangzhou, although the tuition fee of 2 yuan is not cheap, it can be obtained. The current general wage is 2 yuan per month, female workers are 1 and a half yuan, child workers are 1 yuan, and they also have two meals. They also have double salary at the end of the year. As for those skilled workers, there are many people who earn twenty or thirty yuan a month! Although they may not be willing to let their children go to school, they will still obey the kingly law.

However, for farmers in the Han area of ​​the Ming Dynasty, whose per capita arable land is less than 4 acres, this 2 yuan is indeed not a decimal! Moreover, the gap between the rich and the poor in rural areas is extremely large. The land is extremely concentrated, even more serious than the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China in history! Therefore, the real difficulty of compulsory education is these Chinese poor peasants - but the one who can make the most profit from compulsory education in the future is actually their children!

Because these children read books, they will know how big and wonderful the outside world is. They will know how small the men who ride on their heads and act as a blessing are. They will know that only by walking out of their hometowns with many people and few lands can they have a bright and happy future.

However, Emperor Zhu did not immediately implement compulsory education in the country, but chose to implement it first in Yingtian, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Lanfang, the highest per capita income, and Northeast, etc., but even so, there are still many farmers in Yingtian, Shanghai and Guangzhou who are suffering from this tuition fee of only 2 yuan, and even so, there are still many bell-ringing petitions!

Luo Zenan's nagging continued. He sighed and said, "This kind of thing is pseudo-Qing. There are too many things in the past and Ming Dynasties. It is always reasonable and unreasonable to say. However, if we want to realize compulsory education, we can only do wrong things and let the newspaper's clearance discussion. The tuition fee is still charged, otherwise we can only push the compulsory education back indefinitely."

"Did those Qingliu Liquors have proposed ways to achieve free compulsory education?" Emperor Zhu asked again. He, the emperor, is now busy with so many things. He is so busy that he doesn't read the newspaper carefully, just read a title. The important content will be compiled and clipped by Pan Zuyin's Royal Study Secretariat to send it to Emperor Zhu's desk. Those discussions on compulsory education do not seem to be important...at least not a big deal before Old Man Zhang and other farmers ring the petition bell.

But now, this matter is not small. Taking advantage of the trend of farmers petitioning against compulsory education, Qingliu Logistics' attack firepower on compulsory education will definitely be strengthened!

"Of course there are many ways to propose, but there are roughly three. One is that the court discovered long-term education bonds to raise education funds." Luo Zenandao, "I have calculated that if this method is adopted, the court will need to issue 60 million education bonds every year, and the fiscal deficit will also increase to 90 million yuan."

Zuo Zongtang interrupted: "Due to years of military use, the court's debt scale has reached 360 million yuan, and the interest alone will be spent more than 18 million yuan a year, and there will be nearly 30 million yuan in deficits to be compensated. If the education bonds are added to the court, the court's debt will be too much."

It is not that a total of 60 million education bonds are issued, but that at least 60 million is issued every year. The increase in interest burden alone will be more than 3 million... For the central government of the Ming Dynasty, whose fiscal revenue is only 100 million or more, this is simply an irreparable hole.

The Ming Dynasty court now has no right to mint coins! HSBC is privately owned by the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and not owned by the court. Therefore, the bonds issued by the court cannot be guaranteed by the right to mint coins, and must be guaranteed by taxes. The market can still accept the issuance of 30 to 40 million yuan a year. If it is issued hundreds of millions and issuanced every year, no one will want it! Moreover, it will definitely not be released yet, so the first method is to raise problems for the court!

Zhu Jishi snorted coldly, not commenting on it.

"The second method is to push compulsory education to local governments, and local governments issue bonds or increase taxes on their own. In this way, compulsory education can be carried out in stages, with conditions first, without conditions later, with high standards for good conditions, and low standards for poor conditions."

Luo Zenan then proposed a second politically correct free method for compulsory education.

Zuo Zongtang added from the side: "Emperor, many members of the Constitutional Assembly now agree with this method... If this is implemented, the emperor and the court will take action."

In other words, Emperor Zhu and the court are politically correct. But... what should local bonds be guaranteed? Now is the era of gold and silver currency, and money cannot be converted into money printing machines. Moreover, the credibility of Mingyang and HSBC has been established in the world, which is a great help for the Ming Dynasty to develop industrialization. If HSBC indiscriminately issues currency to buy bonds, the consequences will be unimaginable if the brand that has finally been established falls out! If HSBC banks dare not buy those local bonds, can they still expect ordinary merchants to pay for it?

As for tax increases, it is even more whimsical. The tax method of the Ming Dynasty was similar to that of the bourgeois states of this era. Local public bureaus had great power in taxation! Except for tariffs, salt tax, import and export property tax, interest tax, and stamp tax, which are under the central government, most of the tax rights are in the local area.

Local council members are publicly recommended by major taxpayers. How could they pass a bill that raises taxes by tens of millions or hundreds of millions to handle compulsory education? Those who are qualified to elect local public bureau members or run for parliament are quite wealthy, and their descendants will not go to public primary schools at all!

There is not much room for improvement in the agricultural tax in the Ming Dynasty. Now there are about 1.2 billion mu of arable land in the 18 provinces of Han area, and the land tax is about 120 million silver dollars. Don’t think that this is a small amount. In the Qing Dynasty, the annual income of the annual income is only more than 40 million taels! In addition, farming is a crop with extremely high economic value, and there is really no profit. Even if the weather is good for a mu of fields, it is already a great harvest to have four stones of grain in a year.

Received. Four-stone grain millet is not four-stone white rice! At most, it will be three silver dollars for grain merchants. The cost not including the land tax is deducted, which is a gross profit of 1.5 yuan to 2 yuan. The land tax in the upper field is 15 large copper coins, accounting for almost 10% of the gross profit of planting one acre of upper field. Moreover, under the control of local gentry and officials in the Ming Dynasty, the division of upper fields, middle fields and lower fields is not based on the output, but depends on whoever is in the hands of the land...

Therefore, land tax cannot be added, and it can only be processed for commercial taxes. The increase of 60 to 70 million industrial and commercial tax means that the profits of factory owners and merchants will be reduced by 60 to 70 million yuan. Capital within the Greater China Customs Alliance is free to flow, and the Japanese do not have such heavy taxes... (To be continued...)
Chapter completed!