I want to be emperor

Chapter 1088 Thirty-two billion Chu Yuan

In the summer and August of the 1950s, Lee's Power Company, one of the four major automobile companies, held a press conference in which they announced that they had completed the research and development of a spark plug ignition system.

They claimed that after years of hard work, with the technical support of many strategic partner companies and partner universities, and after spending millions of R&D funds, they finally successfully developed a spark plug ignition system and installed it on their gasoline engine platform.

And publicly demonstrated their new engine at the press conference...

This is a gasoline engine that is no worse than the engines of the other three car companies in terms of performance. The performance is quite excellent. Under the condition of strictly controlling the weight and volume of the engine, it adopts a four-cylinder structure, and the three-liter displacement can still reach 20 horsepower. The power of the horsepower is a bit high, but the fuel consumption is a bit high... When used with their New Year's car, the fuel consumption per 100 kilometers is more than thirty.

But these days' gasoline engines are all oil-guzzlers, and they all consume a lot of fuel.

Even though the fuel consumption is relatively well controlled, Songhe Automobile Company's cars have always been economical. Their four-cylinder, three-liter engine has a fuel consumption of 30 mph per 100 kilometers.

The remaining two, with their flagship four-cylinder engines, basically have a fuel consumption of more than 30 kilometers per 100 kilometers.

There is no way, the technology is just like this... If you want to strictly control the volume and weight with poor technology, and squeeze out 20 horsepower from a limited displacement of three liters, the fuel consumption will not be much less. go.

At the same time, compared to the expensive price of the car itself, gasoline is much cheaper...

In recent years, in order to promote internal combustion engines, open up new tracks and seize market share, those oil companies have made arrangements in advance... It can be said that they are all selling gasoline at a loss.

On the one hand, these oil companies have deployed gas stations across the country and built storage and transportation systems, and on the other hand, they sell gasoline at low prices... Therefore, from the perspective of the gasoline business itself, all oil companies are not making money, or even losing money!

However, all oil companies are actively planning to build a large number of gas stations, storage and transportation systems at any cost.

Because all oil companies have been able to see that the empire's automobile market has begun to take off, and it will definitely be able to fly very high... In the future, it is possible to produce millions or even tens of millions of automobiles annually.

With the accumulation of automobile production year after year, the empire's automobile population will soon exceed 10 million, and even exceed hundreds of millions in the future... In this case, how much gasoline will be needed!

The huge market in this area makes the oil companies drool when they see it.

That's why they have to increase investment in layout regardless of early losses... They must actively lay out the gasoline refining, production, storage, transportation, and sales systems from now on. They need to establish a kind of gasoline in the minds of consumers in the early stage. The impression that you have to come to their gas stations to refuel has formed a consumer inertia over time... Ten or twenty years later, it will naturally form a market advantage.

The competition in the gasoline market is the same as the competition in the kerosene lamp market... It requires market cultivation. In order to promote kerosene, these oil companies also widely purchased kerosene and gave away kerosene lamps... Many low-income families did it for a Free kerosene lamps, and then started to switch to kerosene. It turned out that this thing was cheaper and easier to use than the previous whale oil and other animal and vegetable fuels, so I completely switched to kerosene.

If there had not been such a large-scale marketing campaign to give away kerosene lamps for free, the promotion of kerosene would have been much slower.

In addition, the current oil companies are also engaging in such a set of things overseas. In Europe and West Asia, they have widely adopted the activity of giving away kerosene lamps when buying kerosene. It seems that the oil companies have suffered a loss for a while...

But you have to know that the cost of oil companies is lower than you think. Today, oil companies are basically extracting oil in the Persian Gulf region of West Asia and the Gulf of Mexico in the Americas. The cost of oil exploration in these places is extremely low... Over in West Asia, you can dig out oil by digging any sand in the desert, and many of them are self-expanding oil wells.

Therefore, the price of oil in the contemporary Dachu Empire is actually very cheap... When it was the highest in the past few years, the price was actually just over one Chu Yuan. Later, as oil production gradually increased, the price continued to fall. Currently, Chengshun is fifty In 2007, a barrel of oil in the Songjiang futures market was only 0.73 yuan... The fluctuations in recent years have not been too great.

But don't think that being cheap means making money... In fact, these oil companies are still very profitable... To what extent are they profitable?

There were so many that the Imperial Taxation Department launched an exclusive tax specifically for the oil industry.

Such as oil extraction tax, oil sales tax, oil environmental protection tax, etc... covering the mining, transportation, refining, production and sales links in the oil industry... Be it kerosene or gasoline in the contemporary Dachu Empire, the retail price Seventy percent is actually various taxes!

However, even so, the current price of gasoline is not expensive... There is no way. The empire almost controls the global territory, which means it controls the world's oil production areas. Many of them are oil that is very easy to develop, such as in West Asia. In the Baku region of Eastern Europe, in the Gulf of Mexico region of the Americas, and in the Southeast Asia region.

There are so many resources, so naturally you can mess around with them...

Why does Luo Zhixue dare to promote the automobile industry on such a large scale... He does not hesitate to provide various subsidies and support.

On the one hand, the automobile industry plays a great role in driving the economy, and on the other hand, it is also because there is no shortage of oil...

What's the point of the automobile industry without gas?

Li's Power Company successfully bypassed the technology patents of the spark plug ignition engines of the other three automobile companies and developed its own engine. This allowed the Dachu Empire to have four independent automobile companies, all with exclusive All four companies also have spark plugs to ignite the engine and gearbox.

This means that the automobile industry of the Dachu Empire will usher in a strong competitor.

This Lee's Power Company is not a good one... Behind it is Lee's Iron and Steel Company, and Lee's Iron and Steel has the highest market value among all listed companies, and in terms of scale, it is second only to those in the industry. A very large enterprise directly under the ministry.

Relying on sufficient advanced support and technical expenditures from brother companies, Li's Power Company can spend huge sums of money and use a large number of technical talents for research and development, and cooperate with some universities and even the Royal Institute of Technology for research and development.

Well, speaking of it, the Royal Institute of Technology is lagging behind in terms of internal combustion engines... Although there is a lot of theoretical research, there are not many practical application research results, which makes the academic committee of the Royal Institute of Technology somewhat dissatisfied...

The Royal Institute of Technology spends tens of millions or more in R&D funds every year. It maintains a leading position in R&D in many fields. In some key areas, such as steam engines and electromagnetic research, it has pioneered and led the way. The industrial development of the empire.

However, in the field of internal combustion engines, it was accidentally surpassed by those companies.

This is also the reason why the internal combustion engine R&D project team at the Royal Institute of Technology chose to work with Lee Power Company for research and development... It's not that Lee Power Company is so good or powerful... but that the other three car companies don't play with Royal Institute of Technology. Well, everyone has developed a gasoline engine independently without the need for technical support from the Royal Institute of Technology.

For the Royal Institute of Technology's internal combustion engine, especially gasoline engine research and development projects, there is no other option except to cooperate with Li's Power Company.

However, although it accidentally fell behind in the field of internal combustion engines and failed to take the initiative, the Royal Institute of Technology still maintained its strength in another route of engines, that is, the research and development of steam turbines.

In the forty-eighth year of Chengshun, researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology had already produced the first practical steam turbine in human history. This was a steam turbine used in the field of power generation. Its speed was extremely exaggerated, with a maximum speed of It can reach 30,000 rpm...

However, a speed that is too high is actually very difficult for practical applications. If you want to use the steam turbine in practice, you have to reduce the speed and adopt a controllable speed, that is, the speed of the steam turbine can be adjusted at different speeds. changes in speed, which requires staged expansion and the support of multiple rotors.

And these are all black technologies for the contemporary Dachu Empire...the design and processing are extremely difficult, and can be said to challenge the limits of the current Dachu Empire's industrial base.

But researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology have suddenly solved these problems, and even developed several new materials to solve these problems.

In the end, the steam turbine prototype developed by the Royal Institute of Technology was successfully manufactured and used in subsequent experiments to generate electricity. The power generation efficiency far exceeded that of traditional steam engines.

The breakthrough in this field also quickly attracted the attention of the three major domestic steam engine manufacturers, and then successively obtained various basic patents for steam turbines. On this basis, steam turbines for power generation were launched on the market.

Nowadays, although steam turbines have only been available for more than a year, power companies in some areas have actually used steam turbines to generate electricity... Although this thing is expensive, the power generation efficiency is too high, and the cost of integrated power generation has also dropped significantly.

If nothing else goes wrong, most of the subsequent thermal power generation in the Dachu Empire should use steam turbines... As for how much can be used, it depends on the progress of the overall construction of electrification, and when the patent for alternating current will expire...

Nowadays, a large number of domestic enterprises, especially the provincial power grid companies and the three major government-run electrical companies, are waiting for the corresponding core patents on AC to expire.

Why? Because some of the current core patented technologies of alternating current are controlled by Li's Electric Company...and in the past few years of negotiations, Li's Electric Company has always refused to hand over these core patents and is only willing to sell alternating current equipment...

However, this is unacceptable to a large number of power companies.

Especially for the provincial government-run power grid companies that have obtained the exclusive right to supply commercial electricity, that is even more unacceptable... This means that there is only one exclusive supplier of power grid equipment... This is equivalent to handing the knife directly to the supplier, and then The vendor held the knife to his own neck.

So after discussion with the provincial power grid companies, we decided not to use alternating current for now... Although alternating current has many advantages, there is nothing we can do if we can’t use it. We can only use direct current.

Therefore, currently all government power supply networks in the Da Chu Empire, that is, all commercial power supply networks in all directly governed territories, all use DC power.

However, although Li's Electric Company cannot obtain all business in the local, that is, public commercial power grids in the territories directly under the Central Government...but they can still sell their AC equipment directly to companies that generate their own electricity for their own use.

At the same time, they began to establish and implement their AC power grids in some vassal states. For example, the Kingdom of West Africa, as one of the few wealthy vassal states with a relatively special political status, had early reached cooperation with Li's Electric Company and allowed Li's Electric Company to Construction of alternating current power supply network in the West African kingdom. Now the goal of Li's Electric Company is very clear... Even if they are unable to build the power grid they want in directly-controlled or even administrative territories, as long as they seize the markets of those vassal countries, they can make huge profits in the future.

As for the domestic market, although there is still a stalemate, as time goes by, Li's Electric Company and various power grid companies will eventually compromise and reach an agreement... It is nothing more than supplying AC equipment at a fair price, and liberalizing patent authorization on a limited basis, so that Several other electrical companies are also involved in the production and manufacturing of AC equipment, so there probably won't be much of a problem.

On the one hand, the major power grid companies are also under great pressure... The superiors have long said that electrification will be carried out, but after years of hard work, there is only a DC power grid, and DC power is doomed to be difficult because of its relatively short transmission distance and high transmission costs. Build a large-scale power supply network.

If the scale cannot be increased, the cost cannot be reduced. If the cost cannot be reduced, it will be more difficult to promote electrification.

On the other hand, as time goes by, many core patents of alternating current are gradually approaching their expiration... Several of these core patents will probably expire in the 55th year of Chengshun.

Under such circumstances, the longer time goes on, the fewer bargaining chips Li's Electric Company will have...

If the power grid companies didn't still need the strong technical support of Li's Electric Company in the AC field to lower the cost of power grid construction, they probably wouldn't have continued the negotiation, but would have delayed it until the core AC patent expired in five years.

Once the patent expires, other domestic electrical companies, especially the three major government-run electrical companies with relatively strong technology, will immediately launch AC corresponding equipment to the market... These three major government-run electrical companies have already developed AC in the laboratory. The equipment is ready, but patent restrictions prevent it from being put into commercial application.

Li's Electric Company was so aggressive in the past few years that it almost acquired all the core patents related to alternating current in one fell swoop. Even if other companies could produce alternating current equipment, they could not use it for commercial purposes.

But this situation is gradually changing... Li's Electric Company initially wanted to obtain authorization for power grid construction in the administrative territory. It did not seek exclusive authorization, but only sought an opportunity to participate, even as part of a power supply network. , such as power plants, but were rejected by various power grid companies!

All commercial electricity fields in directly-controlled and administrative territories belong to the exclusive monopoly power of the provincial government-run power grid companies and are not open to the outside world at all, even Li's Electric Company is no exception.

Later, Li's Electric Company stepped back and asked not to participate in the construction of the power grid, power supply... It didn't ask for anything anymore. It just simply liberalized the supply of AC equipment, and your power grid company purchased it if it was willing.

But the power grid company is still not happy... because this means that for a long time, the only supplier of power grid equipment is Li's Electric Company, which is not in line with the principle.

What the power grid company can accept is that they can purchase and use the AC equipment from Li's Electric Company, but they also require Li's Electric Company to release its AC equipment authorization and allow other electrical companies to produce and sell AC equipment... even if it costs a high sum for this Royalties.

Then the two sides got stuck here... After several years of talks, there was no progress.

As time went by, Li's Electric Company also showed a surrender attitude... because they found that although the power grid market prospects in the vassal countries were great, they were also in the Kingdom of the United States and Song Dynasty, the Kingdom of West Africa and even some European vassal countries. The power grid was built and put into operation in Ligao, but it was not enough to support the huge Li Electric Company.

How can I put it, if we don’t sell AC equipment, the huge initial research and development costs may not be recovered... When the patent expires in a few years, fierce competition will break out in AC equipment.

Under such circumstances, although Li's Electric Company was helpless, in September of the 50th year of Chengshun, it conducted a new round of negotiations with the Dachu Empire Power Grid Management Agency and the government-run power grid companies of many provinces, and expressed its views during the negotiations. Patent licensing can be limited.

This is almost equivalent to Li's Electric Company giving up on its plan to be a local power supplier for many years... In the future, it can only build power grids in vassal countries, and it can only sell power generation equipment in the imperial territory... And it has to cooperate with other Electrical companies compete together for the AC equipment market.

When Li's Electric Company let go of the problem, subsequent negotiations became much smoother.

The negotiation team composed of provincial power grid companies generously stated that as long as you liberalize patent authorization, patent fees are not a problem at all... they will not bargain with you, just follow the market price.

Then he immediately sent a super order, a massive order for AC power generation, power transformation and other corresponding power grid equipment... and the total value of this order exceeded 30 million yuan.

And all of this is worth it... After the government-run power grid obtained the limited-time patent authorization, it turned around and negotiated and cooperated with the three major electrical companies, and then purchased the AC equipment of these three major power grid companies... It was just that the three major electrical companies Although AC equipment is also available, to be honest, the technology is too different, so the purchase volume from them is actually not much. The three major electrical companies combined only took about 20% of the share.

However, this is the reason for the strong request of the government-run power grid... in order to prevent Li's Electric Company from becoming the dominant player in the AC field, which would cause huge consequences.

After Li's Electric Company reached an agreement with the government-run power grid, the electrification construction of the Dachu Empire has truly entered its peak period.

Although many urban power grids have been built before, they are generally small in scale and have high transmission costs. The limitations are still very large... This has also led to the fact that although the electrification of the contemporary Da Chu Empire has been done well, many companies have already started to electrify it. Electrical equipment is used to replace steam engines with electric motors for industrial production. However, in fact, the electricity used by these enterprises is generated by themselves, not directly pulled from the power grid.

However, the construction of public commercial power grids has always been difficult... Even in super-first-class cities like Songjiang City, the entire city has not been electrified.

However, as public commercial power grids also begin to use alternating current for power generation and transmission, the cost of power grid construction will drop significantly, as will the cost of electricity consumption.

At that time, commercial and even residential electricity use can be truly developed on a large scale. At the same time, in terms of industrial electricity use, many small and medium-sized enterprises that cannot generate their own electricity can also use public commercial electricity. Production and people's lives will be greatly facilitated.

At the same time, the further promotion of electrification will also bring about a strong improvement in production efficiency, further improving the economic level and people's living standards.

The two basic core industries of electrification and automobile industry continue to advance, and the economy of the Dachu Empire continues to maintain a high growth rate.

This can also be seen from the central fiscal revenue of the Great Chu Empire. In the 50th year of Chengshun, the central fiscal revenue of the Great Chu Empire exceeded 3 billion Chu Yuan for the first time, reaching a huge figure of 3.2 billion Chu Yuan.

It is worth noting that this is only the central government’s fiscal revenue and does not include local fiscal revenue at all levels.

In addition, it is worth noting that among these taxes, the proportion of personal income tax has gradually increased. Currently, personal income tax accounts for 5% of the total central government revenue!

Although it is only five percentage points, it is actually a quite dazzling number... Because you have to know that the tax system of the Dachu Empire is actually an indirect tax system, and most of the taxes are collected in the production, transportation and sales links. , collected from enterprises...

Ordinary people don't even feel the existence of taxes...the only thing they can feel is personal income tax, and personal tax is actually very small.

As for personal income tax, because the threshold is relatively high, the tax payers are mainly middle- and high-income groups. The higher the income, the more taxes... Of course, this does not include the rich. The rich always have a lot of ways to get around it. It is also a headache for the tax agencies to collect this personal tax, and it is legal. In recent years, they have been trying to collect personal tax on the rich, but with little success.

Therefore, the main payers of personal income tax are actually middle- and high-income groups... The bottom class does not have to pay personal income tax, and the rich do not pay personal income tax.

This has forced the tax authorities to start thinking about increasing taxes on luxury goods, and then increasing the proportion of high inheritance taxes...

The tax authorities of the Dachu Empire have always been very vindictive and shameless.

Not to mention the so-called influence of public opinion... It's okay for you to evade taxes secretly. After all, it's out of scope. The tax authorities will ignore you for a while, but if you dare to cause trouble, they will check your taxes... These rich people, How many people dare to pat their chests and say that they have never evaded taxes?

But that is also a follow-up matter. At present, the main payers of personal income taxes in the empire are still middle- and high-income groups...

The increase in the personal tax rate means that the proportion of middle- and high-income groups is also rapidly expanding!

This means that after years of development and plunder, the social structure that has maintained the pyramid structure for a long time is finally slowly changing towards an oval social structure.

Specifically, the proportion of people at the top has not changed much... Although they have become richer, the proportion of the population has not increased much.

The proportion of the population in the middle-income group is gradually increasing, and the proportion of the corresponding bottom-income group is gradually shrinking.

The top of the tower has not changed, the middle has increased, and the bottom has decreased... This is the current change that is taking place in the social structure of the Chu Empire... Although it has not yet reached the standard oval structure, it has already changed in this direction.

When Luo Zhixue got this statistical report, he couldn't help laughing... This was the policy effect he had been pursuing for many years.

In the early years, all Luo Zhixue's policies had only one purpose, which was to enable the people to eat well and eat well... Therefore, he set an annual per capita food consumption target of 400 kilograms and worked hard to achieve this goal. It took decades... and the goal was finally achieved in the early 1940s.

Luo Zhixue's goal then became to improve people's living standards as much as possible, reduce the food consumption index (Engel coefficient), reduce the gap between rich and poor (Gini index), etc.

When people live in this world, they have to pursue something...Luo Zhixue is no exception. The world has been conquered, the people can have enough to eat, and alien planets cannot be visited for a while. There is actually nothing left that Luo Zhixue can do. Not much left, nothing more than pursuing a better standard of living...

Therefore, the policies in recent years have actually been developed around this purpose, and now it seems that the effect is not bad, especially after promoting electrification and the automobile industry, the improvement is very obvious.