"I can't accomplish anything because God doesn't help me!"

On August 24th of the third year of Tianqi, when the civil servants were angry and the eunuchs took action against them, when Zhu Youjian was content and undisciplined in Liaodong, riding horses in the countryside all day long, in the southwestern mountainous area, accompanied by one person's unwillingness to show his filial piety,

Thousands of Ming troops marched towards the city...

On August 27th of the Apocalypse, Zhu Xieyuan sent people 800 miles away to rush, and three days later the news of An Bangyan's suicide and defeat reached the capital.

Since then, the She'an Rebellion, which had plagued the Ming Dynasty for nearly three years, came to an end.

This campaign cost 9.27 million taels of white silver. More than 390,000 soldiers and horses were dispatched. Soldiers and horses from six provinces including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangdong, and Huguang were mobilized. More than 12 million shi of food were spent.

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Since the end of this battle, there have been no chieftains in Guizhou, and some chieftains in Yunnan, southern Sichuan, Guangxi and other places have also been cautious because of the Ming army's battle, and many careerists have bowed their heads.

The capital was decorated with lanterns and colorful decorations, and the people in the southwest were overjoyed. Even the five northern provinces, such as Shaanxi, where millions of people were squeezed out, were all beaming with joy. They walked around the streets and told their friends that the Ming Dynasty had finally finished its two wars.

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For the common people, they don't care who is in power. After all, officials are all the same, and honest and capable officials are always rare.

For them, they are more concerned about the battle to restore the Liao Dynasty and the cause of the She'an Rebellion is the so-called Liao pay.

Liaodong was restored, Jianlu's bones were broken in one breath by His Highness King Qi, and An Bangyan and Song Wanhua in the southwest also died...

Under such circumstances, the Ming Dynasty has achieved peace in all parts of the world, so can the Liao salary be cancelled, so as to give the people a breath of relief?

The people's idea was very simple. They did not ask the court and government to exempt them from taxes. They only wanted to reduce the taxes on Liao's salary.

Perhaps for some people who regard themselves as noble, the so-called Liao salary is nothing more than nine cents of silver per acre of land, which is nine cents. These idiots are reluctant to pay for it.

But for Zhu Youjian, who is familiar with the abnormal tax system of the Ming Dynasty, what does Liao's salary mean to the people of the world? He couldn't understand it more clearly.

Local officials protected the gentry, big landowners, businessmen, nobles, and civil servants, and transferred the nine cents per mu that originally belonged to them directly to the people of the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty had more than 700 million acres of land, of which only two-thirds were in the hands of the common people, and the other one-third were occupied by them.

It looks good, because they only occupied one-third and left two-thirds for the people.

But here comes the problem. Among these two-thirds, most of the acres are in the same class.

Small and medium landowners...

The common people have no money, and to put it harshly, they can be said to be poor compared to the powerful gentry.

A poor man has no money, so to collect money he has to find someone who is not so poor, or even a little rich.

If we use the economic terminology of later generations, this is "harvesting the middle class."

Throughout the dynasties, only by harvesting the middle class can a dynasty continue to live.

Judging from the process of the Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, when the rulers aimed their sickles at this class, the dynasty became a dying person entering the intensive care unit.

Whether you can continue to live depends entirely on whether the number of this class is large enough.

The Song Dynasty performed very well when harvesting this class, so even though it occupied the least amount of land, it easily exceeded 100 million people.

In terms of harvesting the middle class, the Ming Dynasty was far inferior to the Song Dynasty. Because of the greed of scholar-bureaucrats, merchants, big landowners, and noble relatives, plus the sudden Xiaoglaihe drought, they were actually consumed in only about thirty years.

Seven, seven, eight, eight.

In this kind of consumption, the middle class in the north is undoubtedly the first to be harvested.

"The poor have no money to collect, and the rich can't collect, so they can only collect you guys. Chongzhen, you are really unlucky..."

When Zhu Youjian figured out the ins and outs of Liao's salary, he looked at the booklet in his hand and sighed.

[This year, a total of more than 6,234,300 taels were collected, including more than 3.73 million taels from land tax, more than 1.76 million taels from miscellaneous items, more than 750,000 taels from salt tax, and 70,000 taels from customs duties.

The remaining two...]

Looking at the types of tax items and the quantities of each tax item in his hand, Zhu Youjian was speechless and stood up at the same time, put his hands behind his back, and walked out of the courtyard.

The Jin Yiwei followed him, while he was walking in the General Manager's Mansion, which cost more than three thousand taels of silver.

His mind flashed through all the information that appeared in the world where he was...

Liao rates, also known as new rates, were first collected in the 46th year of Wanli and were mainly used for military needs in Liaodong.

From the time the quota was set in the forty-sixth year until the death of Emperor Wanli in the forty-eighth year, the Ming Dynasty, except for a few areas such as Guizhou, levied an average of nine cents of silver per mu of land, totaling 5,200,620 taels.

By this year, after Wei Zhongxian came to power, Zhu Youxiao used Wei Zhongxian to collect guaguan, salt and other miscellaneous silver from merchants and people in the name of Liao's salary.

The reason why we received more than six million taels of silver this year, a new high, is because Cui Chengxiu and others were causing trouble in Jiangnan.

In previous years, the amount of salt tax imposed by Liao's salary increase was at most 70,000 to 80,000 taels, but this year it suddenly increased tenfold, and the amount of miscellaneous items that usually amounted to several hundred thousand taels was also increased to more than 1.7 million taels by Cui Chengxiu.

Is this a good thing? Not really…

Cui Chengxiu might impose additional miscellaneous and salt classes because he needed to defeat some salt merchants and officials who were disobedient to him, but it was impossible to collect so many at once.

If we could collect that much, we would definitely target the common people, small and medium-sized landowners, small and medium-sized salt merchants, and small and medium-sized merchants.

The way to start is very simple, just ask the court to increase taxes.

Zhu Youjian didn't know exactly how many people there were in the Ming Dynasty, but even if it was calculated based on 150 million people, each person would have to pay 42 pence on average.

The one adult who occupies one-third of the resources passes on one-third of the taxes that should be levied to the other two-thirds of the people, resulting in the remaining two-thirds of the people having to pay six

Thirteen articles.

These two-thirds of people, even if they are counted as 100 million people, but based on the minimum of five people per household, they are only 20 million households.

Twenty million households, that is, the 20 million men who serve as the backbone, share these more than 6 million taels of salary. In fact, each person needs to share more than 300 taels.

Judging from what Zhu Youjian knows, except for the densely populated Nanzhili, Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and other four provinces, hundreds of counties in the Ming Dynasty can earn wages of 20 cash per day. In other provinces, except for the prefecture and provincial government

Besides, the salary is only ten to fifteen cents.

In other words, this share of the burden basically means that the more than 20 million people who have been the mainstay have been working in vain for a month.

If you add in the land tax, you will have worked for two months in vain, plus one month of corvee service...

OK! One-third of the year is spent on paying taxes.

This heavy tax is also the reason why small farmers with only a few acres of land cannot survive after land annexation.

To be honest, Zhu Youjian was short of money, and Ming Dynasty was also short of money, but Zhu Youjian knew what money he could take and what money he couldn't take.

Six million taels of Liao's salary is a lot, but at this time, imposing this kind of tax again, as long as the local area encounters a slight disaster, is tantamount to forcing the people to rebel.

“If you don’t treat the disease, you can’t treat the disease…”

Zhu Youjian, who was crossing the steps, stopped and sighed, then turned and walked towards the study.

When the imperial court was short of money, he had to take action and cancel the Liao salary.

Although he knew that even if the Liao tax was abolished, there would still be many corrupt officials who would continue to use this tax name to deceive the people in order to engage in corruption and transfer land taxes to the gentry, but such cases were in the minority after all.

It is impossible for him to give up the issue of alleviating the burden of hundreds of millions of people just for the sake of a very small number of circumstances.

After thinking everything through, Zhu Youjian returned to the study, then picked up the pen and prepared to write.

When the Jin Yiwei next to him saw this, he immediately studied the ink, and then Zhu Youjian began to write.

He first explained to his royal brother the current situation of the Ming Dynasty, the number of acres of land owned by the Royal Horse Supervisor after the Tianxia Guard Field had been abolished, and he calculated how much grain the Ming Dynasty could mobilize under such circumstances.

He tried hard to write the situation of the Ming Dynasty well and avoid the Little Ice Age that he knew would break out.

Because he knew that if he didn't write the situation well, his brother would not be willing to give up his salary.

Once someone establishes taxation, no ruler will want to abolish it.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian specifically described the life of the people at the bottom of the Ming Dynasty, and then mentioned, "If Liao pay is imposed again, chaos in She'an will become a common occurrence."

In one sentence, the seriousness of the matter was expressed.

Although the She'an Rebellion had always been against the Ming Dynasty's second- and even third-tier troops, they still dispatched two first-tier troops, the Baigan soldiers and the Shangzhi soldiers, and gathered nearly 400,000 troops.

If something like this breaks out again, I'm afraid Ming Dynasty will fall into the quagmire of war again.

"Send this letter to your royal brother."

After finishing writing, Zhu Youjian dried the ink and handed it to Lu Wenzhao, who arrived late.

Lu Wenzhao agreed and then handed the letter to Lu Xian for escort. After he made arrangements, Zhu Youjian also looked at him with a confused look and said:

"You're late for duty today. That's not your nature."

"Your Highness, please forgive me. I took the humble position of going outside the city this morning to check the intelligence of North Korean merchants with the people at Qianhu Office in Jingcheng." Lu Wenzhao first admitted that he was late, and then told the reason why he was late.

"Tell me about it" When Zhu Youjian heard that the matter was related to North Korean merchants, he knew that the news must be related to Jianlu.

As expected, Lu Wenzhao quickly revealed the information that North Korean merchants had discovered for the Ming army.

"It seems that the old slave was shot in the battle at Chaoyang Mountain. He is still lying in bed. The internal affairs of Jianlu are under the supervision of Daishan." Lu Wenzhao was the first to reply, but Zhu Youjian immediately interrupted:

"Where's Huang Taiji?"

"Huang Taiji has never shown up, but his status seems to have declined due to the loss of Zhengbai Banner. Hong Shang found out about him without any effort." Lu Wenzhao responded:

"It is said that he was also seriously injured. After lying in bed for two months, the old slave transferred ten of Engelder's Niulu and a battalion of Fan Wencheng's troops to his disposal."

"In addition, more than 4,000 men of the Jianlu tribe over the age of 16 were assigned to various banners. Lao Nu's two yellow banners were assigned seven niulu, 2,100 people, and Daishan was assigned four niulu
To be continued...