Lin Yueru said: "There are countless ways to make a living in this world, and every industry is closed. It is difficult for outsiders to enter. People have ancestral skills and cherish them for fear that outsiders will learn them. Every industry has its own jargon. , outsiders can’t even understand it, let alone learn to imitate it.”
Xiao Niangpi said: "Yes, in order to keep the jobs of their children and grandchildren, they have tried their best. Every time you create a new profession, you are accumulating merit for the people of the world. They have learned this way to make a living. The means used will benefit future generations."
Yang Fan said: "I didn't think that much. I just felt sorry for them for a moment."
In the two years since Yang Fan came to Ming Dynasty, he has brought many new crafts and industries. Now, breakfast stalls have appeared in Zunhua, Xincheng and even some nearby cities.
We provide breakfast varieties such as fried dough sticks, tofu puffs, mini buns, steamed buns, fried liver, fried tofu soup, siomai, and fried cakes.
These people are all trained by the training courses set up by Yang Fan.
Xinghe Supermarket also sells a breakfast trolley made of steel rivets.
The cart can be pushed around and sold while walking.
Inside the car are three small iron stoves that burn honeycomb briquettes, buckets and many drawers for storing ingredients. There are three pots, one for deep-fried dough sticks and fried cakes, one for steaming buns, and one for cooking noodles.
Yang Fan recruited some workers' family members to sell breakfast in small carts, which can be regarded as increasing their family income. If they don't have capital, they can borrow money. After all, they are his workers' families.
Others who want to do this business can also apply, and Yang Fan arranges for them to do business in nearby towns and traffic intersections. At the end of the day, the merchants and people coming and going can sell a lot of food.
It can be considered that an industry has been added.
In the past two years, mobile food sales points from Zunhua have appeared in many counties and bustling towns, docks, ferries, etc. in Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and even Henan. It is estimated that thousands of families have benefited from these.
"Sir, now Beizhili has lost its crops, and refugees have risen again. Alas, when will this world end?" Xiao Niangpi frowned and said in distress.
Originally, through Yang Fan's efforts last year, almost all the refugees were absorbed. Even the worst ones found enough jobs in Hukou in the iron mines in Zunhua and Qianxi.
But this year's disaster has caused a large number of victims.
The burden on farmers was too heavy, and the heaviest burden was on the small landowners. One after another, they went bankrupt and fled.
Originally, Yang Fan didn't know why it was the landless farmers who went bankrupt, rather than the landless tenant farmers.
The gatekeeper of Yang Fan's home in Xincheng was Hu Bin. His family originally had ten acres of land to support ten people. Although it was tight, they could still make a living.
But the government taxes were too heavy and he simply couldn't afford them.
On the surface, the land tax in the Ming Dynasty was very low.
The basis of the land tax in the Ming Dynasty was the two-tax system inherited from the two-tax law of the Tang Dynasty. The two taxes were collected twice in summer and autumn. The summer tax was paid in June, and the autumn tax was paid in November.
According to the ancestral system set by Zhu Yuanzhang, except for the Jiangnan region, the tax burden on farmers in other parts of the country is not heavy. Most tax rates are 5% to 10% of the estimated total harvest.
But this is not the case.
The corvee service was endless, and peasants were constantly assigned to do various jobs for the government. There was no end to it.
This is all unpaid labor. If you can't bear it, you have to pay to be exempted from labor. This is tantamount to taxing in disguise.
Moreover, land tax revenue only accounts for less than 10% of the Ming Dynasty's agricultural tax revenue, and more than 50% is poll tax. It is also counted as tax and oral tax.
All dynasties have promoted light corvee and low taxes as a manifestation of their benevolent governance. They have never mentioned the reduction of poll taxes.
The total land tax accounts for less than 10% of the fiscal revenue. What's the point of reducing the tax from 10 to 30 tax?
The rule of Wenjing has been praised for thousands of years, but in fact it was all superficial and a way to whitewash peace. The burden on the farmers was not relieved in any meaningful way.
The poll tax existed in China before the Qin Dynasty. After the Qin Dynasty, all dynasties levied taxes with the nature of a poll tax.
Why do governments in the past dynasties like hand tax? Because it is simple and low-cost. How simple it is to count the heads of farmers at their homes and collect money. Is there anything simpler than this?
In a self-sufficient natural economy, there are two main channels through which the government obtains financial revenue from farmers: one is a tax based on acres, that is, land tax; the other is a tax based on head, that is, head tax.
The poll tax is highly efficient, but the most unfair.
The high efficiency mentioned here means that more taxes can be collected with a small tax cost.
Because any country with good household registration management makes the basis for calculating the head tax simpler than any other tax, the tax collection cost can be very low.
The so-called most unfair refers to the fact that the rich with the most income and the poor with almost no income need to pay the same amount of tax.
In the case of a poll tax, the welfare losses of the rich are minimal, while the poor may lose the most necessary resources for life.
Historical dynasties have insisted on this obviously unreasonable tax as the largest form of fiscal revenue, which is obviously to protect the rich and let the poorest people at the bottom, who are the largest in number, bear the main tax responsibility.
In order to survive, people have two choices for children they cannot afford.
One is to sell sons and daughters. If you sell the child, you don’t have to pay taxes.
This is why the human trade was so prosperous in ancient times. Girls were sold to brothels, and boys were sold to wealthy families as domestic slaves.
The other is to give birth to too many children, throw them into a urine bucket and drown them.
Zhang Juzheng's whipping method originally had a good idea. It was to cancel the poll tax, divide the tax amount into the land, and levy taxes according to the amount of land.
He believes that this can reduce the burden on the lower class people and promote fairness.
When he was there, he could force bureaucratic landlords and farmers to share the same number of acres and pay taxes equally.
But after his absence, the bureaucratic landlords stopped paying taxes. All the tax burden fell on the peasants who owned a small amount of land. In the middle and late Wanli Dynasty, the bureaucratic landlords immediately counterattacked and killed Zhang Juzheng's family. Then, officials and officials were quickly restored.
Tax exemption for everyone.
The yeoman farmers were all crushed at once. It would be better to collect a poll tax at the beginning, so that at least the domestic slaves and tenants would also have to collect money and share part of the tax.
The result of the reform was that the Ming Dynasty fell in less than sixty years.
There are ten adult men in Wu Bin's family. The poll tax is added to the land tax, which directly consumes all the output of the fields. Coupled with the corvee, his family cannot survive at all.
The farmers had no choice but to sell their land. If it could not be sold, they would give it to others, such as to the homes of wealthy civil servants.
Yang Fan had a conversation with Lao Wu, and Lao Wu settled an account for Yang Fan. If he cultivated ten acres of land by himself, he wouldn't have a single grain left, and he might still owe money to the government.
If you sell the land and use the money as a deposit, you can rent 100 acres of land from a civil servant's home. Although you have to pay half of the output to the civil servant, the tenants don't have to pay taxes and can still have a lot left over. Moreover, the corvee is also evaded.
Lost.
This is why the registered population in the Ming Dynasty is getting smaller and smaller.