Jinghua, who manages his family with a high pragmatism, is used to just planning and assigning specific tasks to people. He can at most call a few responsible people over for face-to-face discussions and then let him go. Therefore, when he is expected to be the Minister of Household Affairs,
It is absolutely impossible to deal with "twenty-eight taels of honey".
The biggest feature of Hongwu-style finance is that the consumption departments and taxpayers are directly connected, and the central financial department, that is, the Ministry of Household Affairs, does not have a central regulatory role. What will this lead to? Of course, it will lead to this kind of fiscal decentralization.
The center has no money.
You see, each consumption department has financial power: the Ministry of War levies military supplies and military services, the Ministry of Works levies construction materials and labor services, and the palace levies royal expenses and consumption...
What does this mean? It means that whoever is more powerful among these yamen can collect more taxes. So what does the Ministry of Revenue do? The Ministry of Revenue is in charge of the grain and the grain tax in the areas where the One Whip Law is implemented.
However, even so, it was not easy to be a minister of household affairs in the Ming Dynasty. According to Huang Renyu's statistics, 89 ministers of household affairs took office after 1380, of which 25 resigned, 22 were transferred to other positions, and 16 were dismissed.
7 people died in office, 7 people resigned due to illness, 3 people were executed, 3 people were exiled, 1 person resigned without permission, 1 person died on the battlefield, 1 person hanged himself to die for his country, and finally there are three more amazing people left.
, Your dignified local official, there is no detailed information on the whereabouts in the history books.
Gao Pragmatic knew very well what this Hongwu-style finance was: Zhu Yuanzhang actually regarded such a huge empire as just a rural area that produced and sold itself!
He thought that he only needed to reduce land taxes and appease farmers, and the country would be able to maintain long-term stability. Unfortunately, the reality is that this kind of self-sufficient financial system of each department is rigid and inflexible. In the event of emergencies, those who should collect taxes
If it cannot be collected, there is only one way left: distribute the burden to ordinary people who don't seem to resist.
How ironic! This is almost the opposite of what Zhu Yuanzhang originally imagined. The people he wanted to protect the most have become the people most exploited under this system.
So how did the "Hongwu-style finance" evolve to this point?
As we all know, the nominal tax rate in the Ming Dynasty was actually quite low, which was related to the poor background of the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang.
He looked down on Sang Hongyang, Wang Anshi and others who used grotesque techniques to expand fiscal revenue. Instead, he set tax rates for various places, carved the tax and grain revenue of each province and city on stone slabs, and erected it in the entrance hall of the Ministry of Household Affairs.
within.
The meaning couldn't be clearer: I will never raise taxes.
However, as Gao Pragmatic emphasized previously in "Qi Yong Shu", the cost of low taxation was that the country gave up many government functions, so the Ming Dynasty could only ask the army to farm fields to provide self-supply of military food, implement autonomous management of rural areas, and so on.
In fact, the "separation and cooperation" between the Production and Construction Corps and the Imperial Guard that Gao Jingsi created during the restructuring of the Beijing camp was, to a certain extent, wiping Zhu Yuanzhang's butt.
However, Zhu Yuanzhang was not only that. The ancestral system he established made the Ming court pay very little salary to officials. Later, Gu Yanwu, who wrote "Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world," lamented the poor treatment of officials in the Ming Dynasty.
The salary is so thin as never before."
How bad is it? Do you think it's just a lack of silver? It's more than that. Under the real economy of Hongwu-style finance, officials' salaries were not all silver. Copper coins and treasure notes (almost garbage now) were converted into
All kinds of strange objects, the more famous ones include pepper, sappan wood, etc., were all used as wages and given to civil and military officials.
As for cloth, it is more common. Even different cloths produced in different places, such as silk, silk, silk, satin, satin, etc., can be converted for you and then issued as salary. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Revenue is in charge of this conversion.
——If you calculate too high, the household department will be in deficit, if you calculate too low, the officials will scold you.
To compare it to future generations, it's like you work in a government agency, and you usually deal with the spirit of various superior documents and subordinate work reports. Then when it comes time to pay you your salary, the government says that the organization will not pay you now, but instead gives it to you.
How do you feel about having hundreds of kilograms of eggs and saying that this stuff is your salary?
I work in the imperial court, do I have to open a grocery store when I get home to really convert my salary into money?
So to be honest, under this shady system, it is difficult for officials not to be corrupt.
But Zhu Yuanzhang was not afraid, he had his solution.
His solution was to use Chongdian. He wrote what may be called China's first anti-corruption textbook, "A Brief Summary of Awakening to Corruption." It clearly stipulates that those who embezzle sixty taels of silver will be beheaded in public.
Peel off the skin and stuff it with straw and hang it in the government office as a warning. This is the famous "peeling off the straw".
As everyone knows about what happened later, this bloody suppression failed to stop corruption because the officials were too poor. For example, when Li Dongyang, the chief minister of the cabinet during the Zhengde period, passed away, he was so poor that he "could not attend funerals."
In the end, the wool still comes from the sheep. Officials used clever tricks to increase income, and the apportionment of bank accounts, bank accounts, military service, and salaries gradually got out of control. Although the nominal tax rate was low, the burden on the people became heavier and heavier.
The bureaucracy has rapidly darkened, and has finally reached the point where no officials are corrupt. Anyone who does not integrate into this chain of interests will not be able to gain a foothold in the officialdom. The bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty who were influenced by Confucian culture are experiencing this kind of thinking of "ideal or reality"
When fighting, most people choose to surrender.
As a result, everyone in the court began to work hard to generate income for themselves, but the central finance was completely depleted. It seemed that each department performed its own duties, but each cleared the snow in front of their own door, ultimately forming a huge public service vacuum. Currency
Social responsibilities such as distribution, commercial logistics, household registration statistics, and land surveying are gradually ignored.
The absence of the government gave rise to a considerable degree of grassroots autonomy in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. I am not talking about other places, just Xinzheng, Henan. If the Gao family doesn't agree to something local, can the county master of Xinzheng be able to handle it? However,
The Gao family was still a good official and a good gentry in their hometown. It is almost self-evident what they would be like if they were replaced by local tyrants and evil gentry.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! This state of almost "civilian anarchy" led to a peculiar social scene in the Ming Dynasty: on the one hand, farmers who relocated to their hometowns gave up their household registration due to excessive taxation
, wandering around; on the other hand, urban handicraftsmen spontaneously united to form the so-called bud of capitalism. Suzhou alone had at least 10,000 handicraftsmen during the Longqing period. However, due to the rigidity of the financial system, the government's expropriation of industry and commerce
Taxation was never done until Gao Gong came to power and Gao pragmatism emerged.
Hongwu-style finance is like the Hu Monk's drug in "The Plum in the Golden Ping". When those who are immersed in it become vested interest groups, no one cares about the side effects.
The turn from prosperity to decline in the Ming Dynasty was first reflected in the fiscal inability to make ends meet. As the country's most important tax, land tax has been declining. During the Yongle period, the income from land tax remained at about 30 million shi. By the first year of Jiajing, this number had declined.
to around 25 million. In other words, after more than a hundred years of development in the Ming Dynasty, the government's most important fiscal revenue not only did not increase, but even decreased by nearly 20%.
It had only been a few decades since the establishment of the later Red Dynasty, how many times had the economic scale increased? Even though the times are different, the development speed is always different, but comparing the two, how can Gao Pragmatism tolerate this kind of system that is not only backward but also weird!
Behind this is the fact that the powerful and powerful gentry are occupying vast fields while reducing taxes and exemptions for themselves; but the common people not only have to pay full taxes, but also face additional assessments and corvees. The rich do not pay taxes, and those who pay taxes have no money.
, this strange national situation greatly frustrated the tax system, and the country gradually began to default on taxes on a large scale. According to Huang Renyu's research, by the Chongzhen period, more than a quarter of the counties in the entire imperial fiscal and tax zone had not paid any taxes to the central government.
.
At the same time, financial expenditures were increasing day by day. Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that his sons and grandsons would enjoy financial allocations for generations. This expenditure, which was inconspicuous at first, had become a financial worm by the middle and late Ming Dynasty. According to reports
In the fifth year of Longqing's reign, the Ministry of Rites reported that at that time "only princes, princes, generals and lieutenants at all levels received a total of 8.7 million shi Youqi per year", which accounted for about one-third of the country's land tax revenue.
In summary, the fiscal and taxation system established by Zhu Yuanzhang is not only primitive but also rigid. The seemingly low tax rate and low flexibility result in the government's basic fiscal revenue being almost fixed. In case of natural disasters and man-made disasters, and the government needs additional expenditures,
However, it was discovered that there was no system to collect taxes from those who should pay them. In the end, they could only be distributed to ordinary people engaged in agricultural production, resulting in an increasing burden on the people.
Gao Pragmatic has actually solved a small part of these problems step by step over the years.
For example, in his early work "Shu Yi Road Shu", the post station no longer had the power to exploit the local people, but became a "government guest house" that was responsible for its own profits and losses, and changed from a "government unit" to a "public institution". At the same time, in the past
Officials cannot exploit them at will. They must issue "bills" for everything used along the way and reimburse them when they arrive.
Clearing the land was the second matter. Related to this matter was instigating the emperor to "sell off the imperial estates" and resell as many of the original imperial estates near the capital to the original imperial estate tenants as much as possible. To this end, Gao was pragmatic and considerate.
The emperor came up with means such as loan repayment and redemption for up to thirty years.
But the imperial estate was not enough. Gao was pragmatic and deceived nobles from Beijing and China to join the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance. They used the appalling return on investment in maritime trade to lure them to invest in maritime trade, and then sold off their previously untouchable properties.
, "pack lightly" and go to the sea to make money.
This is actually what Gao Pragmatic worked hard to liberate the means of production to ordinary people, so that they can at least have a basic source of income or a basis for survival. But this work is also not finished. At the very least... the nobles of the south are better than him
There are relatively few people who steal ships, let alone officials.
Of course, many officials now quietly invest in the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance, but there is a little trick here: because these officials dare not blatantly invest in the shares like the nobles, they only enjoy the right to dividends when they invest.
, a series of rights and interests such as voting rights that should have been brought by its shares were transferred to Gao Pragmatic Agent in black and white.
In fact, officials in this era really don't care much about this, or they subconsciously think that they are no better than Gao Pragmatic in doing business. Instead of worrying about these unfamiliar matters themselves, it is better to leave them to Gao directly.
God of Wealth.
The third thing is the division of the Beijing camp. This is not only to solve the problem of the lack of combat effectiveness of the Beijing camp, it is also to solve the financial problem: those who fight will fight well, those who make money will make good money, and those who make money will support the war.
At the same time, the imperial court lost the big burden of Beijing Camp, which originally needed to allocate hundreds of thousands of taels every year.
However, Gao Pragmatic knew in his heart that the effectiveness of this system was limited to the time when he himself was still in the court. Once Gao Gao left the court, whether he resigned or passed away, this system would fail very quickly: those who make money will definitely not be happy.
Raising those who fight "for no reason".
He is pragmatic and those who make money dare not support those who fight, because the most profitable part of these people is in the hands of Jinghua and in his pragmatic hands. If one day he is pragmatic and abandons this matter, these nobles will
Don’t we have to quickly find various excuses to turn off this “extra expense”?
Are you saying it’s hard to find an excuse? You’re kidding, that’s too easy: My Production and Construction Corps is losing money, and I can’t afford to support you!
How about it? As long as you make a good fake account, even the emperor can only stare.
Therefore, in fact, Gao Pragmatic has not finished the restructuring of the Beijing camp. He has other big moves yet to be made. Of course, this has a lot to do with his leaving office too quickly. It is not that he only did half of it on purpose and left someone behind.
Backdoor.
By the time "Qi Yong Shu" was published, it actually meant that the highly pragmatic fiscal reform had entered deep water.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Gao pragmatically did some tricks on this matter, linking the tax reform with some of Gao Gong's reforms in the past, such as Gao pragmatically establishing the Customs Department.
It is related to the previous high-arched "Longqing Kaihai".
Originally, the taxes of those ports needed to be levied through the Municipal Shipping Taxation Department. However, although the Municipal Shipping Taxation Department of the Ming Dynasty had a relationship with the Ministry of Revenue, it had little relationship. It was almost a separate organization. It only paid an account to the Ministry of Revenue in the end.
However, the Ministry of Revenue has no control over anything in the tax collection process.
Gao Pragmatic is very annoyed by this situation. What he needs now is a "big household department", and what he needs to do is to unify the central financial power. For a time traveler like him who came from the Red Dynasty system, the most basic economic work idea is
"Macro-control and micro-guidance", now that the central government cannot even unify financial power, should it take the lead in regulation? It can only be ridiculed.
The Customs Office and the Audit Office serve this purpose. The Customs Office is to take back various financial rights one by one to the central government of the Ministry of Accounts, while the Audit Office is even more "vicious" - even if there are still some financial rights that have been lost for a while due to historical issues.
If you can't take it back soon, then I will hold the Sword of Damocles high over your heads.
Even though I can't directly ask you to do this or that, I can tell you clearly: If you can't do what I want, my sword will kill you!
The Audit Office, in fact, puts a tightrope on various yamen or officials with financial power, just like setting up a patrol officer outside the Chief Secretary.
You say I can't control you? Yes, theoretically I can't control you.
You said you dare not listen to me? Haha, then give it a try.
This is why Gao Pragmatic originally planned to cancel all in-kind taxes except for grain and cloth after the Customs Office and the Audit Office were fully open.
It's just that now we have to advance.
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