Chapter 277 Aiding Korea to Fight the Japanese (86) Increased Salary and Tax Sharing System
There were continuous battles on land and sea in Korea, but the Ming Dynasty capital was in a state of peace. At least on the surface, the war in the vassal country seemed to have nothing to do with itself.
Under this situation, the newly promoted Dongge University scholar, Gao Jingshi, seems to have paid special attention to "civil governance" recently, approving the rewards for the war against Yuan Dynasty, and checking the remaining annual royal stipends that need to be spent after the vassal ban, etc.
, all in all very busy.
The reward for the Battle of Fayuan was actually easy to handle, because he had been saving up for this matter in the past few years, and Gao Pragmatic, although a large number of troops were sent to this battle, it only lasted for a few months, and after all the expenses were summarized, it was not
If it does not exceed expectations, there will be no embarrassment of patching things together and making ends meet.
What's more, now that the Federal Reserve exists, some of the so-called "liquidity release" measures in later economics can keep up, which greatly alleviates the possible embarrassment caused by sudden cash expenditures and ensures the stability of central finance. In fact,
In other words, it stabilizes the overall situation of the country.
No matter how much you don't like the pragmatic courtiers, you still have to be convinced by him when it comes to financial management, especially those veterans who have experienced the Jiajing Dynasty. Everyone knows how poor the center of the court was back then.
What now? After a war that dispatched more than 600,000 troops and lasted for several months, the Ministry of Revenue actually dared to say that "the treasury can support 100,000 troops to fight in Korea for more than a year" - you know, Bozhou in the southwest
The rebellion has not yet been settled, and a steady stream of money is still needed.
Under such circumstances, the Ministry of Revenue could actually support a hundred thousand troops to send troops to Korea for more than a year. The treasury was so full that it was unimaginable back then! Who could such a minister of the Ministry of Households be?
Dare you say that he didn't do a good enough job?
Of course, the best thing that Gao Pragmatic has done is not supporting the war. In the eyes of the courtiers, Gao Nanning and Gao Dajun's greatest good governance recently must be "salary increase"!
That's right, it's a salary increase. Gao Pragmatic had already proposed to the emperor three days ago that he would give a salary increase to all civil and military officials across the country and throughout the dynasty!
This incident occurred extremely suddenly, with no warning before. However, less than ten days after he accepted the Nanning Marquisship and took office as Dongge University Scholar after his "three speeches", he submitted the memorial and asked for help from officials across the country.
Salary increases, and the extent of the salary increase is quite shocking - the lower-level officials have greater salary increases.
In the Ming Dynasty, the salary of officials in the Ming Dynasty was based on grain as the unit of measurement. The specific situation is: the first grade, the monthly salary is 87 shi; the first grade, 74 shi; the second grade, 61 shi; the second grade, 48 shi.
; From the third grade, thirty-five stones; From the third grade, twenty-six stones; From the fourth grade, twenty-four stones; From the fourth grade, twenty-one stones; From the fifth grade, sixteen stones; From the fifth grade, fourteen stones
Stone; from the sixth grade, ten stones; from the sixth grade, eight stones; from the seventh grade, seven stones and five buckets; from the seventh grade, seven stones; from the eighth grade, six stones and five buckets; from the eighth grade, six stones; from the ninth grade, five stones
Five buckets; five stones from the ninth grade.
At this time, one stone of rice was about 90 kilograms. Assuming that the price of rice was 6 yuan per kilogram, the monthly salary of a first-grade official was nearly 47,000 yuan, while that of a county magistrate was only 4,000 yuan.
According to Gao's pragmatic salary increase proposal, the county magistrate's monthly salary will suddenly increase to about 8,000 yuan, directly doubling it. Moreover, according to his previous reforms, officials' salaries will no longer be paid in kind such as food, but will be paid directly in money. At the same time, they can also choose
The small amount of banknotes issued by the Federal Reserve is another layer of formalities for officials - after all, they can't finish eating even if they have so much rice, and they all need more money.
Of course, the higher the monthly salary of lower-level officials is, the smaller the increase will be for senior officials. For example, if Gao Pragmatic himself does not count his title, other titles, etc., he is only the second-rank official of the Ministry of Revenue.
For example, the original salary was about 33,000 yuan, but after the salary increase, his salary was only equivalent to about 35,000 yuan, which was a very small increase.
The most interesting thing about this memorial is that when it was presented to the emperor, the emperor rarely responded quickly, but did not respond for several days. As for the officials of the imperial court, it was even more interesting. Almost no one followed the emperor.
Pragmatically speaking, there were only a few people who "expressed dissent" and they only "questioned" whether this move was against Taizu's wishes, and their words were very mild.
So the emperor finally couldn't sit still, and asked the Chief of Ceremonies, Pianhong, to ask the Ministry of Household Affairs. The main idea was that the ministers should have higher salaries and the lower ministers should have lower salaries to show the difference between superiority and inferiority, so as to encourage everyone to be determined to make progress. Now the proposal of the Ministry of Revenue has not only been greatly weakened
The difference in salary between ministers and minor ministers.
Moreover, given that there are far more minor ministers than ministers, this move is likely to cause the central finance to fail to make ends meet in the future, and "may not be effective for future generations." Therefore, the Ministry of Revenue is required to explain in detail.
This matter was of great concern to the civil and military officials of the court, and the Ministry of Revenue "lived up to expectations" and soon submitted a "detailed explanation". According to Gao Pragmatically, this salary increase was precisely because the "minor ministers" were overwhelmed
, the salary increase is essentially for high salary to maintain integrity.
The saying that high salary can support integrity is actually not complete. According to Gao's pragmatic experience, high salary alone will probably not be able to support integrity. In the final analysis, if you want to maintain integrity, you still need to have a complete supervision mechanism and an effective punishment mechanism.
However, the latter is still related to the former. After all, you can't let a county gentleman's income be less than that of a skilled Jinghua worker. This is the reality of the current Ming Dynasty society - if it can't compare, the county gentleman can hardly compare.
They will definitely engage in small tricks, whether it is rent-seeking for power or direct corruption, and the imperial court cannot arrest and kill everyone like the Taizu Dynasty did.
It's not that you can't kill, but it's useless to kill. The Taizu Dynasty used the torture of skinning and pulling grass to kill hundreds of thousands of corrupt officials, but was corruption banned? No, corruption even got worse because it essentially violated the norm.
People's basic thinking leads to a serious mismatch between social status and wealth and income.
Gao Pragmatic did not believe that he could make these feudal court officials feel that "serving the people" was the right thing to do. He could only carry out reforms and mediation by "matching social status to wealth and income as much as possible", while at the same time raising the level of support for grassroots local officials.
supervision to achieve a relatively good result.
In his "detailed explanation", he cited some of the expenditures of local officials. For example, there are actually only three people in the county government who are "court officials" in the true sense. If the county magistrate does not hire his own masters to help handle some common affairs, in fact, the vast majority are
You can't manage a county well.
However, the court did not care about the cost of hiring a master, and the county magistrate’s salary was not enough, so it would be strange if he was not corrupt. We can’t expect everyone to lose money as an official, right? If everyone had that awareness, the Ming Dynasty would have become a country of gentlemen.
The problem of the master is just one of many expenses. In short, the insufficient income of the county magistrate is probably a low-level bug that has existed since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. It must not only be corrected, but also be corrected step by step and completely.
For example, regarding the issue of master teachers, in addition to raising salaries, Gao Pragmatic also suggested that hiring officials be directly included in regular fiscal expenditure items. For example, he said, "Three people can be hired to be teachers in the upper county, two in the middle county, and two in the lower county."
Each person shall receive a monthly salary and shall be supported by the imperial court."
In addition to the master, other standing officials, government servants, etc. are also included in the scope of Gao Pragmatic's "court support".
However, this would obviously greatly increase the court's expenditure, which is why the emperor hesitated to agree. However, Gao Pinggong settled the accounts for him in the "detailed explanation", or in other words, gave him a way, which was a tax-sharing system.
In this proposal, Gao Pragmatic finally started to take a serious approach to the tax law that has troubled the Ming Dynasty for more than two hundred years. He proposed to set the commercial tax as a regular tax, and then determine the tax rate according to the product and commodity category. Generally speaking, the tax rate is lower for those who are involved in basic people's livelihood.
Those with high added value are subject to high taxes, and those with huge profits are subject to heavy taxes.
Judging from the "detailed description" he submitted, at least no one dares to say that he is seeking personal gain, because Jinghua's own industries at least started with "high taxes", and many industries have reached the standard of "heavy taxes" -
—The old rule is, I hand it over myself first. Before you talk about it, you might as well take a good look in the mirror.
However, being pragmatic does not mean that all commercial taxes must be collected by the Ministry of Household Affairs. Since it is called a tax-sharing system, "sharing" is the key.
Today's society is not comparable to that of later generations. Even for tax collection, the administrative cost is much higher than that of computers. In the Internet era, many things cannot be calculated accurately, so Gao Pragmatic can only make a rough one-size-fits-all calculation: commercial tax revenue
The center gets 60%, and the local area gets 40%.
As for you saying that there are several levels of local government, such as governors, governors, chief secretaries, prefectures and counties, etc., the Ministry of Revenue will not care about these matters. How to divide the 40% of the commercial tax can be discussed later. Anyway, the Ministry of Revenue must take 60% to ensure the central government's
Financial authority. Besides, the Ministry of Revenue has given you a salary increase and helped you share the regular expenses of teachers, officials, government servants, etc. Isn’t it natural that you should get the lion’s share?
What Gao Pragmatic is sure of is that today, whether it is the emperor or the officials, there must be something they cannot see about his purpose. For example, it is unlikely that they will have a significant promotion effect on the local economy after the reform.
Understand - but you may react after time.
This matter is not complicated to say. After the previous reform of the Ministry of Large Accounts, a lot of money that could have been withheld by the local government was required to be turned over. Now that the commercial tax has been changed to a regular tax, this commercial tax will become an extremely important local revenue.
an item of.
Any local yamen would definitely like to have as much money as possible, but the commercial tax is collected and verified by the Ministry of Household Affairs, and they cannot do much fake work locally. Therefore, the only way to increase the commercial tax is to make local business more and more popular.
The more developed it is, this forces local officials and even those who are not officials to find ways to maintain the business environment, thus promoting local development.
Well, will doing this lead to a real estate bubble? That's not the case, because Ming Dynasty's business taxation is very rough, and there is no tax at all when buying and selling houses. There is not much "land financial dependence" in the local area, so there will be no intention to push up housing prices.
Yes, after all, higher housing prices actually lead to higher business costs, which is not only not beneficial to the current local government offices in Ming Dynasty, but also harmful.
This approach is consistent with Gao Pragmatic's past reform ideas. He believes that unprofitable coercion is the most difficult to last long. It is a high probability event that people will die and the government will die. Therefore, his reforms must allow the people or groups who implement the reforms to obtain partial benefits.
For this reason, we do not hesitate to "bundle sales".
According to his experience, as long as there are clear benefits, the people implementing the reform will be motivated to push forward. Even if one day he is pragmatic and ignores it, the system can continue to be implemented.
Of course, any reform must develop with the development of the times. Naturally, socialism cannot be achieved under the productivity conditions of the feudal era. It is impossible to achieve it once and for all. However, that is either the next step of the reform in the future, or it is not even
He is highly pragmatic and can only see what he can see in this life. I can only believe that later people will have enough political wisdom to solve it.
After this "detailed explanation" was submitted, he waited for another two days, but the emperor still did not approve it. However, he summoned Gao Pangshi into the palace and had a detailed discussion in person for an afternoon. After that, the Chief of Ceremonies finally approved the proposal, although there was no
It agreed to implement it nationwide, but allowed "North and South Zhili to take the lead in piloting".
Pilot, this approach seems to have become the standard for reforms of the Practical School in the past twenty years. Since the Gao Gong era, many reform measures of the Practical School have been piloted first, and then gradually promoted after the pilot effect is good. This time, Gao Pragmatic Officials
The salary increase and the actual implementation of the tax-sharing reform also follow this routine, which is not bad.
This major reform, which in fact had a huge impact, was quietly turned over with the tacit approval of the whole court. But just as the matter was settled, North Korea suddenly sent a memorial requesting for canonization.
Of course, the one who wants to be canonized is not King Li Wan of Korea. He has been the king for many years. He was canonized by the Ming Dynasty as early as the beginning of his accession to the throne. There is no doubt about the legitimacy and there is no need to make any unnecessary moves.
Now North Korea is requesting that the Ming Dynasty canonize the crown prince, that is, Gwanghae Lord Li Hui. However, this request is not from Li Xin, but after Guanghai Lord Li Hui was named the crown prince by Li Huo and led the division of dynasties, the ministers of the division of dynasties
They worked it out and gave it to Ming Dynasty.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Regarding the orthodoxy of the crown prince of the vassal country, Zhu Yijun also attached great importance to it and immediately summoned all the cabinet ministers in the Wenhua Hall to ask for the opinions of the cabinet ministers.
Originally, Gao Pragmatic thought that he would be in the minority on this matter, because he was opposed to Gwanghaejun becoming the crown prince of Joseon. However, judging from the current precarious situation in Joseon, it seems that Gwanghaejun's performance is still a bit "master of the people".
"Image", so the other pavilion elders may support the canonization of Gwanghae-gun as the crown prince of Joseon.
Unexpectedly, the result was a big surprise. All the cabinet ministers expressed their opposition to the canonization of Guanghaijun. However, the reason was completely different from what Gao Pangshi thought. They thought that although Li Ao currently has no legitimate son, but Guanghaijun still has an elder brother alive, how could it be
How can we establish him instead of the eldest son? This is simply unreasonable!
In the view of the Ming Dynasty Cabinet, the principle of "with direct descendants, without direct descendants" must not be broken! As for the legend that North Korea's Linhai King Li Gui fell into the hands of Japanese pirates and may no longer be alive, the Ming Dynasty Cabinet stated that he would not see anyone until he died.
If you want to see the corpse, you must not be careless about such an important matter as setting up a throne.
Although Gao Pragmatic looked at the fact that Lord Gwanghae could not be the crown prince from another perspective, since everyone's attitude was so clear now, he did not want to "stand out" and expressed his agreement with this attitude.
After Zhu Yijun expressed his position one by one, Zhu Yijun added some patches out of his own psychology and said: "What you dear friends said is absolutely true. I also believe that the superiority and inferiority of the legitimate concubines cannot be disturbed. Since the eldest son of the king
If you are still here, how can there be any reason why your younger brother should be granted the throne?
Moreover, the King of Joseon, Li Ho, is still in his prime, and there is a possibility that he will give birth to a legitimate son in the future. If I canonize Li Hui at this time, and the King of Joseon has another legitimate son born, how will I and the court deal with each other?"
Of course Gao Jingshi knew the emperor's little thoughts, and of course the other elders also knew it, but no one pointed it out. Gao Jingshi even took the initiative and said: "If you don't have a direct descendant and the emperor is not old, you should first reserve your throne and wait for it. This is the right way."
Zhu Yijun clapped his hands with satisfaction and said: "Yes, this is the right way! Mr. Shen, just draft your reply accordingly."
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