Chapter 283 Zheng Guoben () kills pigs to raise integrity
Seeing this group of court officials who were obviously in a state of sluggishness, most likely wondering how many fat pigs there were in the world who were willing to be slaughtered by Mr. Gaoge, Gao Pragmatic felt a little helpless. It seemed that if they didn't show their interests first, they would I can't listen to my follow-up disaster relief measures.
"Ahem!" Gao Pingshi cleared his throat, clapped his hands and said, "Everyone, everyone!"
Seeing that it was Mr. Gao Ge who spoke, everyone finally recovered from their hysterical state, and their unfocused eyes looked at the butcher... er, the great Ming strategist.
"Everyone, I have been busy with wars in the past few years of the Ming Dynasty. Although the Ministry of Household Affairs has carried out some effective reforms in finance, which has greatly increased the annual income. However, I also know that this dynasty has maintained low official salaries since the founding of the People's Republic of China. During the system, many scholars studied hard and were promoted to official positions, but they could not even afford to hire a housekeeper.
What's more, like Haigong Gangfeng, he deserves to be the governor of heaven, but his family is so poor that he can hardly eat meat. How can you not be sad? Therefore, a few years ago, I sent a message to the emperor to provide a small salary for the officials of the world..."
As soon as he mentioned this matter, all the officials attending the meeting, no matter where they came from, had to express their gratitude. In fact, the salary of officials in the Ming Dynasty was so low before, Gao Pragmatic's actions that time were really a trick for everyone. Welfare, and more importantly, the money he spent to increase his salary was also obtained through various reforms, and it did not increase the burden on the people much, which is especially rare.
In fact, many people can't help but have an idea pop up in their minds: If Mr. Gaoge doesn't mess around from now on, this alone is worthy of a "Chinese correction"!
At this time, Gao Pragmatic waved his hand to stop everyone from singing praises, and continued: "Despite this, according to the calculations of the headquarters, the current salary of officials is actually still low, which is not conducive to the imperial court."
Eh? The low salary of officials is not conducive to the court?
Everyone was a little startled after hearing what he said. Didn't the low official salaries reduce the court's expenses? Why was it not conducive to the court?
Gao pragmatic seemed to know what they were thinking, and smiled slightly and said: "The low salary of officials certainly reduces the expenditure of the court, but officials also need to pay for food and clothing, recruit the shogunate, and hire people, so that they can truly carry out the government affairs of a place." It's manageable, isn't it? But what if he has no money?
Either you are tired of taking office, but you are not doing everything well; or you are neglecting government affairs and letting them rot without being able to do anything, causing the people to complain and the gentry to be dissatisfied; and the worst kind is Turning into a giant rat, greedy for ink, bullying the court at the top, and bullying the people at the bottom, it can be said that the harm is endless."
These words really touched the hearts of everyone, and they all agreed. Only Chen Yubi, who was the Minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, was a little uneasy and said with a slight hesitation: "Could it be that Mr. Ge wanted to follow the example of Tian Yanglian or Zhitian Yanglian like he did in the Song Dynasty?" Similar move? If so, the headquarters would like to advise the cabinet minister to think twice - neither Qingli's New Deal nor Wang Anshi's reform have succeeded on this point."
Gao pragmatic understood what Chen Yubi meant, but he had never thought about the method of raising integrity in Zhitian. Of course, he also understood why Chen Yubi suddenly thought of Zhitian.
Throughout almost the entire feudal dynasty of China, officials received salaries in many forms, which can be roughly divided into four types: land, grain, physical goods, and coins.
In the pre-Qin period, salaries were basically based on physical goods and land. Later, they gradually developed into grain and coins, but they were also linked to fields. After all, China has always been a large agricultural country, and the topic of land cannot be avoided.
During the Northern Wei Dynasty, the imperial court stopped paying money and food to officials. Instead, it directly allocated a piece of land of corresponding size according to the official grade and let the officials collect rent by themselves. This is the origin of job fields.
During the Northern Wei Dynasty, the post field was used to pay wages. At that time, the court was too lazy and was afraid of trouble itself, so it became the most convenient way to pay wages by allocating a piece of land to collect rent for yourself. You can pay it to yourself, and pay more.
It's up to you to decide. Of course, you will definitely not exceed the "market price" by too much, otherwise no one will be willing to be a tenant in your home.
However, with the gradual development of the economy, the situation has changed. The scope of job fields has become larger and larger. This is not paying wages. This is simply preparing for enfeoffment.
For example, there is a comment on this in "History of the Song Dynasty": "There are no job fields, and they select people and small envoys who are close to the people. Each member pays tea soup money and ten guans per month. Although there is a job field, it is less than ten guans per month.
, all complement each other, so we should enrich the benefits of raising integrity. If we are afraid of the sick people, we will appoint a general judge and the county magistrate to verify it, remove the fields that cannot be cultivated, and damage the excessive quota."
For this reason, the imperial court took back the job fields and paid corresponding salaries to the officials. By the time of the Song Dynasty, the economy was extremely developed, and a new problem arose, that is, corruption was too serious.
At the very beginning, Song Renzong raised this issue of corruption when he presided over the Qingli New Deal, hoping that the court could properly arrange job fields. Unfortunately, the Qingli New Deal failed in the end, so the burden of reform fell on Wang Anshitou.
Wang Anshi's head was filled with excitement, and he said that the solution to the corruption problem is very simple, that is, high wages to support integrity! As long as officials are given high enough wages, of course they will not be corrupt. For this reason, Wang Anshi decided to use job land as a reward in addition to salary.
Distributed to all officials.
He wants to use this to put an end to the corruption problem, but has the problem really been solved? How is that possible!
I have to say that Wang Anshi's idea can only be described as naive - yes, you Wang Anshi may have enough moral awareness, but as long as your salary is adequate, you will never be corrupt. However, there are so many officials in the world, and you can find someone with your level of awareness.
How much? I’m afraid most of them are far from it.
There is no need to pay taxes on the job fields, which are purely the officials' own income. As expected, local officials began to illegally occupy more job fields for various reasons, which in turn turned the job fields into a new tool for corruption.
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In fact, in addition to basic salary and job income, the income of officials in the Song Dynasty was very rich. For example, they had silk and satin subsidies, which were subsidies for buying clothes; and tea and wine money, which was the cost of drinking tea and drinking wine.
; Kitchen food money, which is the money reimbursed for food and drink; salary money, which is the subsidy for lighting fires and heating at home; horse feed money, which is the money spent on food and drink for one's own horses, etc.
But even so, it still cannot stop the hands of corrupt officials.
After the Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, what about the Ming Dynasty? Zhu Yuanzhang's approach has been mentioned many times, so he is too lazy to whip the corpse out again. Let's talk about Zhang Juzheng's approach in the original history.
Zhang Juzheng's most famous financial reform in later generations is the "One Whip Method", although this thing was not his first - the first was Gui E; nor was he even the first to start vigorously promoting it - the first strong promoter
It is a high-gong one. But in any case, later generations attributed this credit to Zhang Juzheng.
Of course, this algorithm is not completely unreasonable, because after Gui E proposed it, the controversy was too great, and the court was in turmoil, and the thunder was loud and the rain was small; Gao Gong pushed forward forcefully, but his steps were steady, and he mainly promoted prosperity in Jiangnan.
It did not spread across the country, and his time in power was too short.
In this comparison, Zhang Juzheng was the first to promote a whipping method nationwide, and he has been doing it for many years. It is not a big problem to credit this achievement to him, but we should not forget Gui E and Gao Gong. That would be too unfair.
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However, in addition to the unbalanced regional development mentioned many times before in this book, which has caused poor areas to suffer greatly, the unified implementation of a whipping method across the country also has a very serious problem, that is, fire consumption.
To put it simply, the whip method is to change all the previous physical taxes to cash, and only require a whole ingot of silver. So the question is, if they are all cash, where will there be so much silver?
For this reason, local governments have to find a way. Copper coins and physical objects can be exchanged for silver, but they are often collected in broken silver. These can be used to pay taxes, and the government must take these broken silver to melt them into whole pieces.
Ingots of silver.
However, the process of melting silver involves losses. In other words, one tael of broken silver will definitely not melt into one tael of whole silver. For this reason, the government must charge a fire fee, which is the price difference. In the end, this fire
Consumption has become the main income of local officials.
Local officials who are relatively more conscientious will only charge two or three taels of fire expenses for one tael of silver, but there are also those unscrupulous people who will charge half a tael of fire expenses for one tael of silver, which is simply life-threatening.
Zhang Juzheng also turned a blind eye to this point. Why? Because he - or the court, did not want to pay for it. Since the local officials had their own ways to make money, that was not bad, but it would save the court from having to pay for it.
Spending money to maintain integrity with high salary. As for who was unlucky in the end, Zhang Juzheng couldn't care, or he couldn't find a way to get the best of both worlds, so he had to "suffer the common people".
After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty basically followed the practice of fire consumption, which allowed local officials to make a solid fortune for a period of time. However, in the last years of Kang Mazi, the corruption situation became very serious again.
At this time, the Qing Dynasty also began to decay.
In order to change the decadent situation, Yongzheng made new reforms in the area of Huohuo. This required a lot of courage, because this reform touched the interests of all local officials in the world.
However, Yongzheng made up his mind and asked officials from all over the country to hand over the fire consumption to the imperial court. In other words, no matter how much fire consumption you collect for one tael of silver, all of it must be paid as taxes. This is the famous "fire consumption returned to the public".
However, wouldn't the local officials lose a lot of money? Of course they would not agree. For this reason, Yongzheng had to make a compromise, and he suddenly came up with the idea of raising honest silver.
This method is actually a strange one, because the Yanglian Silver is essentially a fire fee collected. Generally, different levels of Yanglian Silver are distributed according to the affluence of different regions. And somehow, the Yanglian Silver is really high, usually it is
More than ten times the salary, and the highest can even be a hundred times.
For example, Liu Mingchuan, the governor of Taiwan in the late Qing Dynasty, had an annual salary of only 155 taels, but Yanglianyin was paid more than 10,000 taels. This shows how ridiculously high the amount of Yanglianyin was.
Why is the Yanglianyin so high? This matter is a bit complicated. Due to space limitations, I will not go into details here. In a word, the amount of Yanglianyin is actually proportional to the amount of fire consumption. Therefore, officials from all over the country pay for themselves.
Yang Lian Yin, on the other hand, worked even harder to hand over the fire consumption - being able to hand it over means they created a lot of fire consumption.
Of course, what's more interesting about the Qing Dynasty is that the money for raising integrity only belongs to local officials, not the officials in the capital. But it doesn't matter, the officials in the capital also have ways - I am a central official, can the local officials not please me? Therefore, there is the so-called
"Tan Jing", "Bing Jing".
From this, a vicious circle is formed: when the fire consumption is high, the local officials have more money to raise money, so they can send more ice and charcoal to the officials in the capital; when the officials in the capital get the benefits, they will
Will tacitly allow local officials to charge higher fire costs.
As for who is unlucky, it’s not the officials anyway, so it can be anyone.
Officials' salaries are too low and seriously mismatch with their social status. Do they need high salaries to maintain integrity? Perhaps yes, because this mismatch will stimulate the greed of human nature and make officials inevitably find ways to engage in power rent-seeking.
However, although it is not impossible to support Lian, it certainly cannot be done this way. At least the same group of officials cannot control the amount of money to support Lian, because there is no essential difference between this and paying oneself a salary. Especially when the source of this money is
When it is the tax money of ordinary people, the problem becomes even more serious, which will inevitably lead to severe exploitation of ordinary people.
From this, Gao Pragmatic came up with a new method: Don't you like exploitation? Yes, I will let you in quietly, but the target of this exploitation is not ordinary people, but wealthy businessmen and local gentry.
of.
"Don't worry, Mr. Otsuka, that's not what I mean." Gao Pragmatic said, looking around at everyone, and announced his plan: "What I mean is that from now on, the silver earned by the 'three-class foreign nobles' will be distributed throughout the country."
, will be pooled to establish a fund, 30% of which will be used as a bank to support officials.
The amount of this money for raising integrity will be audited at the end of each year, and then all will be distributed to officials across the country, regardless of Beijing officials or foreign officials, according to grade and position around February of the following year."
As soon as this statement came out, everyone couldn't sit still, and subconsciously began to wonder how big the money was, and how much money they could get each year based on their rank. However, after thinking about it, they discovered one of the key points: since it is fixed
The ratio is 30%, so in the final analysis, if you want to make more money, you need enough people across the country who are willing to spend money to obtain this "third-class foreign title" as the elders in the cabinet call it.
But how can we make such a big fat pig... No, there are more knights, wise men, and good gentry like this?
Gao pragmatic looked at everyone in front of him and smiled without saying a word.
One hundred thousand, thirty thousand, ten thousand, you can't get such large sums from ordinary people. You can only mobilize wealthy businessmen and local powerful people.
Hum, the Ming Dynasty made the country poor and rich, and there were a lot of rich people in the local areas. If you don't squeeze them, then they will just bury their money as heirlooms, which will be of no use to the national economy...
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ps: Sorry, maybe it was because I was sleep deprived a few days ago. I was a little sleepy after dinner last night. I originally planned to take a nap, but ended up falling asleep. I woke up at 4 a.m. and saw that something was wrong, so I quickly made up for it.
This chapter...this chapter counts as yesterday, and tonight's chapter counts separately.