Chapter 283 Where did Zheng Guobins (fifty) money go?
Gao Jingshi's views on the Ming Dynasty's finances are consistent with the mainstream views of later generations, that is, he is very sure that the Ming Dynasty "hidden wealth among the people" - but the Ming Dynasty's hiding of wealth among the people was not a subjective will of the court.
, but the supreme ruler of this imperial court was deceived and passively hid wealth from the people, and hid it very seriously and exaggeratedly.
Whether it's serious or exaggerated, using such words inevitably requires a comparison, but at this time the Tatar Qing Dynasty did not exist. Moreover, the Tatar Qing Dynasty was a deformed regime in which a minority ruled the majority. In some aspects, it was not comparable, so it still had to be compared.
It would be fair to compare it with the previous Han dynasty.
The Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty undoubtedly have one thing in common, that is, they are both feudal countries based on agriculture. Although this may seem like nonsense, it is very important and will be discussed later.
In terms of control over the country, the Song Dynasty was slightly stronger than the Ming Dynasty. Both the registered population and the number of registered acres were larger than the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, although the Song Dynasty seemed to have far more officials than the Ming Dynasty, they were actually parasitic on the country.
On the contrary, there were fewer privileged classes, so the Song Dynasty had greater financial potential.
In terms of external situation, the situation of the Ming Dynasty was better than that of the Song Dynasty. Except for a few eras, it had almost no major enemies.
After all, the Mongols themselves were divided, and their power was very unconcentrated. The border trouble they caused to the Ming Dynasty was actually limited, and it could really only be regarded as a "border" trouble - so when Anda Khan broke into the pass and approached the capital, the Ming court
Only then would he be so surprised and nervous, and only then would his border ministers and commander-in-chief come up with so many tricks to commit suicide.
Why? Because no one expected that the right-wing Mongolia, which was dying a few years ago, would actually be able to fake the corpse after changing to a new king.
Therefore, despite the fact that there were wars in the Ming Dynasty's borders from time to time, the scale was actually very small. The Ming Dynasty's foreign war expenditures before Wanli were generally less. And if we look at the current situation after nearly thirty years of hard work by Gao Pragmatic, in
After the markets of Japan, North Korea, and Southeast Asia were fully developed, the Ming Dynasty was able to obtain more external resources, and its overall economic strength today is certainly no worse than that of the Song Dynasty.
But there is a problem here. In an era when the foundation was still an agricultural country, the court's income mainly relied on digging stocks, because before the industrial revolution, the so-called industry today can only be regarded as handicrafts, and handicrafts truly directly create social wealth and industry.
The social wealth created by machine industry after the revolution cannot be equated at all.
There is no need to explain the first industrial revolution. Machine factories replaced manual workshops, and machine production replaced manual labor. Due to the widespread use of steam engines and the use of fossil energy, human productivity increased explosively.
It is a pity that although Gao Pragmatic has taught the principles of steam engines long ago, Jinghua still has not understood the concept of steam engines. Therefore, for a period of time, he always talked about the large-scale use of steam engines in later generations as if they depended on Watt's inspiration.
I was very angry that the technological upgrade was completed as soon as I saw it - Watt was obviously just improving it. Without the foundation laid by those before Watt, how could this steam engine be so easy to develop?
In short, in this era, except for a few countries who make a living by robbing grass and grain or digging gold and silver mines, most countries still have to rely on extracting domestic resources to survive. At this point, let alone the Ming Dynasty, in Chinese history
None of the unified feudal dynasties was as capable as the Song Dynasty.
In other words, only the Song Dynasty could take away a little benefit from the rich, while other dynasties basically failed. Of course, when it comes to mining the stock, the overall level of the Ming Dynasty is still average.
The Eastern Han Dynasty and Sui and Tang Dynasties may be the real hardest-hit areas, so we won’t mention this for now.
Let’s compare the Song and Ming dynasties and give a few examples to understand.
Take the salt tax for example. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Yancheng and Taizhou accounted for about half of the country's salt production. Some data say that the annual output of Huai salt was a little more than 900,000 yin. It is estimated that the national salt output at that time was about 2 million yin.
One quotation is 116.5 Song Jin (Note: This is according to the "Song History·Tonghuo Zhi", each salt quotation is 116.5 Jin, and the price is 6 tons.), which is equivalent to 149 city Jin. In this way, the annual salt production in the Northern Song Dynasty is about
It’s 300 million kilograms.
The court of the Song Dynasty sold salt to salt merchants for 6 guan each. Since the total amount was 2 million guan, the salt tax was 12 million guan per year. It is known that the peak salt tax in the Northern Song Dynasty was as high as 13 million guan, which was a little higher than this theoretical value. It can be seen that the Northern Song Dynasty
The salt tax collection is relatively reliable.
So what was the salt production in the Ming Dynasty? According to the Ming Dynasty's "Gang Salt System": merchants holding salt yin were divided into 10 yin by region, each yin was 200,000 yin, and each yin was worth 300 kilograms of salt, or six silver
Four cents of money, called "woben", plus tax of three taels of silver, and minister (transportation) of three taels of silver.
It can be seen that the annual salt output of the Ming Dynasty was 600 million kilograms. At that time, one kilogram was equivalent to 596 grams in later generations, and the total amount was equivalent to 672 million kilograms in later generations. Considering that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty increased by about double that of the Northern Song Dynasty, the salt production also doubled.
, which matches exactly.
Since the ratio of population and output is almost the same, let’s look at the final income. The salt tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty is: for every 6 taels of silver, 6 fen and 4 cents, it deserves 13.28 million taels of silver, but... in fact, even if the maximum
, and actually only had 2.5 million taels of silver.
That is to say, the Ming Dynasty produced about twice as much salt as the Northern Song Dynasty, but the salt tax revenue was only one-fifth that of the Northern Song Dynasty. Comparing the two, in terms of salt, if the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty produced the same amount of salt,
Then the fiscal revenue obtained by the Song Dynasty was almost ten times that of the Ming Dynasty!
Oh, by the way, the retail price of a pound of salt in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 120 Wen. In the Ming Dynasty, a pound of salt was often worth three qian of silver, equivalent to 360 Wen.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! It's really wonderful. When the actual salt tax collected by the Ming Dynasty was only one-tenth of that in the Song Dynasty, the retail price was three times higher in the Ming Dynasty than in the Northern Song Dynasty.
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Let me tell you another funny thing: In the feudal dynasties in Chinese history, except for the last dynasty, which was very ruthless when it was about to end, taxes in other peaceful times would often be greatly reduced as the country developed and the people became richer.
The only exception to this rule was the Song Dynasty.
How taxes were raised in the Song Dynasty will not be introduced here due to space limitations. Anyway, during the two to three hundred years of the Song Dynasty, they were raised almost every few decades. The reasons are various. In short, they just went up, up, up, up, and they could only go up, not down.
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In other dynasties, for example, taking the Ming Dynasty as an example, in the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, 28 million shi of grain, 1.2 million pieces of cloth, 300,000 jins of silk, 7.66 million guan of banknotes, and 20 million shi of military settlements were collected, plus other messy items.
Including the total tax in kind, there are still 70 to 80 million yuan in taxes, which is about the same as in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty.
As a result, during the Hongzhi period, 19.56 million shi of rice, 6.77 million shi of wheat, 36,700 jin of silk, 1.15 million pieces of cloth, 88.42 million guan of banknotes, 73 million guan of miscellaneous notes, and 2.93 million shi of military grain were collected from all over the world... In addition to the Ming Dynasty treasure
In addition to the increase in banknotes, other items have declined to varying degrees.
For example, military settlements were only one-seventh of what they were in the Hongwu Dynasty, silk was one-tenth of what they were in the Hongwu Dynasty, and overall taxes were only two-thirds of what they were in the Hongwu Dynasty. Do you think this is miserable? No, no, no, this is pretty good.
, because after a few decades, the military camps were simply gone, Mao... no, not even a straw was left. And by the time of the Jiajing Dynasty, only two-thirds of the Hongzhi Dynasty, and even half of the Hongwu Dynasty were left.
They're all gone.
Look, what does it mean to hide wealth among the people, and what does it mean to make the country poor and the people rich? The Ming Dynasty was so powerful.
Of course, there is a more mainstream saying in later generations, that is, when agricultural taxes were about the same and the Ming Dynasty was even stronger, the Song Dynasty's finances relied entirely on commercial taxes to counter the Ming Dynasty. This is generally correct.
But I'm afraid some things have been overlooked intentionally or unintentionally.
In the ten years of Xining, the total tax revenue of the Northern Song Dynasty was 70.7 million guan, including 21.62 million guan from agricultural taxes, accounting for 30%, and 49.11 million guan from industrial and commercial taxes, accounting for 70%. This is clearly recorded.
You must know that the Song Dynasty did not have large-scale military camps. As a result, the agricultural tax revenue of the Song Dynasty was only slightly lower than that of the Ming Dynasty. What about commercial tax? The commercial tax of the Song Dynasty was more than twice as much as the agricultural tax. In contrast, the Ming Dynasty's
As for business taxes... we can't say that everything is full of vitality, I can only say that it's negligible and is better than nothing.
According to folk notes preserved by later generations, Sun Kegong, a cloth merchant from Songjiang, went to Beijing to sell cloth. He had to pass through dozens of checkpoints along the way, and at each checkpoint there were people asking for money. The amount of tax paid along the way was several times the value of the goods.
, so in the end he could only sell the cloth at a high price.
However, the problem was that most of the local cloth business in Beijing at that time consisted of palace eunuchs smuggling palace cloths for takeout. The cost was extremely low, and regular merchants could not compete at all. In the end, Boss Sun had no choice but to seek shelter from his relatives and started smuggling.
——Because after taking shelter of the nobles, the number of people who want to take advantage of the card will be much less, or even almost non-existent.
So when it comes to this, it can actually explain why Jinghua rose so rapidly in the early days. Jinghua’s boss, Gao Pragmatic, was the nephew of Gao Gong, the chief assistant at the time. One of the two chief assistants was his teacher and the other was his elder brother.
Uncle. At the same time, his partners are either father-in-law or marquis, no matter how bad they are, they are all uncles. Moreover, these people are all related to Jingnan, not the idle nobles in Nanjing.
In this context, no matter whether it is the King of Hell or a kid, who can be so short-sighted and dare to take advantage of Jinghua? Without these huge hidden expenditures, it goes without saying that Jinghua’s competitiveness in business is undeniable.
Similarly, this also explains why Gao Pragmatic insisted that although the nobles seemed useless, they should still be listed as the first batch of allies he needed to win over.
Maybe the person's ability is indeed not that good, but in this world, one can never get through with ability alone. Again, the monsters without a backing are all beaten to death with a stick, and all the monsters with a backing are taken by the master.
Go back and continue to be at ease.
Journey to the West? Just a record of the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty.
It's just that Gao Pangshi has a good background, so such dirty things cannot happen to him at all - of course, he has encountered other people.
All in all, by comparing the Song and Ming dynasties, we can basically find out where the problem lies: How much did the subordinate officials who collected taxes collect? Where did they receive it? What account was taken in? Only God knows.
We should really praise the subordinate officials of the Ming Dynasty. They did not receive a penny of salary from the imperial court, but they always worked hard without complaining, did not change jobs, did not run away, and settled down for the Ming Dynasty - including later the Qing Dynasty - and made a lot of money.
Hundreds of years of taxation. It must be said that this kind of spirit of obedience to the public is really... indescribable.
Since we are talking about subordinate officials, let me just say a few more words. People who study Ming history in later generations often complain that the number of government officials in the third class of the Chao Dynasty cannot be counted. This is of course true, because they have no establishment at all, so it is strange that they can be counted.
Moreover, most of the subordinate officials in the Ming Dynasty were not even the so-called "three shifts of government officials". They were just "helpers", but non-staff hired by officials (and eunuchs) "out of their own pockets" - as Gao pragmatic mentioned just now
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The actual number of these people is probably more than ten times that of the three squadrons of government officials. It is precisely because of the existence of this group of people that although the taxes of the Ming Dynasty were set very low at the court level, in various places, they were actually not at all
Qing, if it was really Qing, it would not have been overthrown by the peasant uprising.
It was mentioned in the previous article of this book that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty may have exceeded 200 million, but some people said it was wrong, because according to historical records, it was only more than 50 million. Hmm... So there was no war in the Ming Dynasty for two hundred years, and this population was actually the same as the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Is the time almost exactly the same?
The reality is that the yellow albums and fish scale atlases produced during the Zhu Yuanzhang era were left unattended for a long time since they were locked on the small island in Nanjing. Later, they were almost rotten, and none of the subsequent emperors were interested in conducting another national census.
- It was useless for the emperor to do it, and the officials would not agree - so a very strange phenomenon occurred: the national population announced by the imperial court always fluctuated a little above the Hongwu standard.
Note that it can only fluctuate a little, never too much, and the population changes in each province can only fluctuate a little, because if it changes too much, then you have to worry that the emperor may adjust taxes when he remembers this - this is absolutely impossible.
It's absolutely impossible.
So the actual situation is that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty should be at least twice that of the Song Dynasty, but the registered household population is not as large as the Song Dynasty, and the registered acres of land are not as many as the Song Dynasty.
There are too many to count.
Logically speaking, the agricultural tax base of the Ming Dynasty was clearly lower than that of the Song Dynasty, but in fact, the actual collection of agricultural taxes in the Ming Dynasty was higher than that in the Song Dynasty... Although the Ming Dynasty court did not have the ability to raise tax rates and squeeze farmers,
In the Ming Dynasty, there were not only officials and subordinate staff, but also a large number of them.
Therefore, let’s not say that the burden on farmers in the Ming Dynasty was lighter than that in the Song Dynasty. The agricultural tax in the Song Dynasty was a small amount, and there was also the commercial tax, which was a great supplement. However, the descendants of the millions of royal families in the Ming Dynasty all pointed out at that time
We are living on the agricultural tax. If Gao Pragmatic hadn't relied on his own prestige and Zhu Yijun's lack of money to fight the war in the past few years, he had to forcefully handle the issue of opening vassals and bans. Now even if the Ministry of Revenue has taken back power, it will still be stretched in many cases.
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Therefore, Gao Pragmatic has always believed that the low central fiscal revenue has little to do with the level of the basic tax rate. What has a big relationship is the implementation level of national tax collection and the audit and supervision level after collection. This is why he wants to train so many people for the Ministry of Household Affairs.
There are more professionals who understand finance, and the reasons for establishing a separate audit office.
As for the fact that Gao Pragmatic is now proposing to raise salaries to officials again through the "three-class foreign nobility system"... you need to understand his consistent behavior: first he will give you benefits, and then he will let you work.
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