Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1780 Aiding Korea and Fighting the Japanese (卌六) Salary Increase and Tax Sharing System
The North Korean side was fighting again and again, but the capital of the Ming Dynasty was peaceful. At least on the surface, it seemed that the wars of the vassal states had nothing to do with them.

Under such a situation, the new Jin Dongge University scholar Gao Yushi seems to have attached great importance to "cultural governance" recently, and it is also the reward for approving the war against the Yuan Dynasty, and it is also the remaining clan salary that needs to be paid every year after the ban is lifted, etc. , in short, very busy.

The rewards for the Battle of Yuan Dynasty are actually easy to handle, because I have been accumulating wealth for this matter for some years, and although Gao Yushi sent a lot of troops in this battle, after all, it only lasted for a few months. If it does not exceed expectations, there will be no embarrassment of patching things together and eating more than enough food.

What's more, with the existence of the Federal Reserve Bank of Ming Dynasty, some measures of the so-called "release of liquidity" in later generations of economics can also keep up. In other words, the overall situation of the country is stabilized.

No matter how much he didn't like courtiers who were highly pragmatic, they had to be convinced by him in terms of financial management, especially those veterans who had experienced the Jiajing Dynasty, all of them knew how poor the court center was back then.

now what?After fighting a war that lasted several months with more than [-] troops, the household department dared to say that "the treasury can support [-] troops to fight in the DPRK for more than a year"-you know, the Bozhou Rebellion in the southwest was still going on. It has not been settled yet, and it still needs a steady stream of appropriation of money.

Under such circumstances, the Ministry of Household Affairs can actually support a [-] army to send troops to North Korea for more than a year. How amazing the filling of this treasury is, it would have been unthinkable back then!Such a Hubu Shangshu, who dares to say that he is not good enough?
Of course, one of the best things Gao Yushi did was not to support wars. In the eyes of the courtiers, the greatest good governance of Gao Nanning and Gao Dashi recently must be "salary increase"!
That's right, a salary increase.Gao Yushi had already appealed to the emperor three days ago, proposing to raise the salaries of all civil and military officials throughout the country and the Manchu Dynasty!
This incident happened extremely abruptly, and there was no warning before, but less than ten days after he accepted Nanning Marquis and took office as a Dongge University scholar after "three speeches must not be rejected", he went to the memorial and asked to be sent to officials all over the country. The salary increase, and the salary increase is quite shocking-the lower the grassroots officials, the greater the salary increase.

The salary of officials in the Ming Dynasty was based on grain as the unit of measurement. The specific situation is: the first rank, the monthly salary is 87 shi; the first rank, 74 shi; the second rank, 61 shi; the second rank, 48 shi; the third rank, 35 shi ; From the third rank, 26 stones; from the fourth rank, 24 stones; from the fourth rank, 21 stones; from the fifth rank, [-] stones; from the fifth rank, [-] stones; from the sixth rank, [-] stones; from the sixth rank, eight Stone; Zhengqipin, seven stones and five dou; Congqipin, seven stones; Zhengbapin, six stones and five dou; Congbapin, six stones; Zhengninpin, five stones and five dou; Congnintain five stones.

At this time, a stone of rice is about 90 kilograms. Assuming that the price of rice is 6 yuan per kilogram, the monthly salary of a first-rank official is nearly 7000 yuan, while that of a county magistrate is only 4000 yuan.

According to the highly pragmatic salary increase proposal, the magistrate's monthly salary will suddenly increase to about 8000 yuan, directly doubling.Moreover, according to his previous reforms, officials' salaries are no longer issued in kind such as food, but directly in cash, and at the same time, they can also choose small-value bank notes from the Federal Reserve Bank of Ming Dynasty. This is another layer of formalities for officials-after all, they You can't finish eating so much rice, and you need more money.

Of course, the higher the monthly salary of low-level officials, the smaller the salary increase for senior officials.For example, Gao Yushi himself, if not counting his titles and other titles, but taking his Household Minister, the official second-rank official, as an example, his original salary was about 3000 yuan, but after the salary increase, his The regular salary is only equivalent to about 5000 yuan, and the increase is very small.

The most interesting thing about this memorial is that when it was presented to the emperor, it was rare for the emperor not to give a quick reply, but to have no response for several days.As for the officials of the imperial court, it is even more interesting. Almost no one disagreed with Gao Yushi, and only a few "expressed dissent" were just "questioning" whether this move violated Taizu's wishes, and the words were very mild .

So the emperor finally couldn't sit still, and asked the Secretary of Rites to criticize the Ministry of Households. The general idea is that the high salary of the ministers and the low salary of the junior ministers are to show the difference between superiority and inferiority, and to encourage everyone to make progress. Now the proposal of the Ministry of Households has not only been greatly weakened. The difference in salary between ministers and junior ministers.

Moreover, since there are far more ministers than ministers, this measure is likely to cause the central finance to make ends meet in the future.

This matter was of great concern to both civil and military officials in the court, and the Ministry of Household Affairs also "lived up to everyone's expectations" and soon submitted the "detailed explanation".According to Gao Pragmatism, this salary increase is precisely because the "little ministers" are overwhelmed, and the salary increase is essentially to maintain integrity with high salaries.

The idea of ​​high salaries fostering integrity is actually incomplete. According to Gao’s practical experience, high salaries alone probably cannot foster integrity. In the final analysis, a sound supervision mechanism and an effective punishment mechanism are needed to maintain integrity.

However, the latter is still related to the former. After all, you can’t let the income of a county lord be inferior to that of a skilled Jinghua worker. They will definitely engage in small actions, whether it is power rent-seeking or direct corruption, and the court cannot catch and kill one like the Taizu Dynasty.

It's not that you can't kill it, but it's useless to kill it.The Taizu Dynasty used the torture of peeling and pulling grass to kill 10,000+ corrupt officials, but is corruption banned?No, corruption has even intensified, because it essentially violates the basic thinking of normal people, leading to a serious dislocation between social status and wealth and income.

Gao Yushi did not think that he could make these officials of the feudal court feel that "serving the people" was the right thing to do. He could only carry out reform and mediation by "matching the social status as much as possible to the wealth and income", and at the same time improve the level of respect for local officials at the grassroots level. supervision to achieve a relatively good result.

In the "Detailed Description", he cited some expenditures of local officials. For example, there are actually only three people in the county government who are "court officials" in the true sense. Can't manage a county well.

However, the imperial court doesn't care about the cost of hiring a master, and the magistrate's own salary is not enough, so it's no wonder he is not corrupt. We can't expect everyone to lose money to be an official, right?If everyone had that awareness, Daming would have become a kingdom of gentlemen.

The problem of the teacher is just one of many expenses. In short, the lack of income of the county magistrate is probably a low-level bug that has existed since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Not only must it be corrected, but it must be completely corrected step by step.

For example, regarding the issue of masters, in addition to salary increases, Gao Yushi also suggested that the employment of officials should be directly included in the regular financial expenditure items. One person will be given a monthly salary, for example, to be supported by the imperial court."

In addition to the master, it also includes other standing officials, yamen servants, etc., which are also within the scope of the high-practical "imperial support".

However, this will obviously greatly increase the expenditure of the court, which is why the emperor hesitated to agree.However, Gao Wu did the calculations for him in the "Detailed Description", or gave him a solution, that is, the tax-sharing system.

In this proposal, Gao Yushi finally started to get serious about the tax law that has plagued Ming Dynasty for more than 200 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, those who are involved in the basic livelihood of the people have low taxes, those with high added value have high taxes, and those who make huge profits are taxed heavily.

Judging from the "detailed description" he submitted, at least no one dared to say that he was using the public to seek personal gain, because Jinghua's own industries at least started with "high taxes", and many industries have reached the standard of "heavy taxes"— —Old rules, I’ll hand it in first, you might as well take a good look in the mirror before you gossip.

However, high pragmatism does not mean that all commercial taxes must be collected by the Ministry of Households. Since it is called a tax-sharing system, "dividing" is the key.

Today’s society is not comparable to future generations. Even if it is tax collection, the administrative cost paid is much higher than in the computer and Internet era, and many things cannot be accurately calculated. Therefore, high-level pragmatism can only make a rough one-size-fits-all: business tax revenue The center gets [-]% and the localities get [-]%.

As you said, there are several levels of localities, such as the governor, governor, chief secretary, state and county, etc. These matters are ignored by the Ministry of Finance. How to divide the [-]% commercial tax can be discussed again. Anyway, the Ministry of Households needs to take [-]% to ensure the central fiscal authority.Besides, the Ministry of Households gave you a salary increase, and helped you share the recurring expenses such as masters, officials, government servants, etc. Isn't it a matter of course?

What Gao Pragmatism can be sure of is that no matter whether it is the emperor or the officials, there must be some places where he can't see his purpose. Understood - but after a long time may react.

This matter is not complicated. After the previous reform of the Ministry of Household Affairs, a lot of money that could be withheld in the local area was required to be turned over. Now it has been changed from commercial tax to regular tax. Then this commercial tax will become an extremely important local income. of an item.

Any local yamen definitely wants to have as much money in their hands as possible, but the business tax is collected by the Ministry of Households, and they can't do much in the local area. Therefore, the only way to increase the business tax is to make the local business more and more popular. more developed.This forced local officials and even those officials who were not officials to find ways to maintain the business environment, thus promoting local development.

Uh, will this lead to a real estate bubble?That's not true, because Daming's commercial taxation is very rough, there is no tax at all for buying and selling houses, and there is not much "land financial dependence" in the local area, so they will not be willing to push up housing prices. After all, high housing prices actually lead to business The increase in business costs is not only not beneficial to the current local governments of the Ming Dynasty, but also disadvantageous.

This approach is in line with Gao Yushi's previous reform ideas. He believes that coercion without benefits is the hardest thing to last.Therefore, his reform must allow the person or group implementing the reform to obtain some benefits, and he does not hesitate to "bundle sales" for this purpose.

According to his experience, as long as there are clear benefits, those who implement the reform will have the motivation to promote it. Even if one day he is highly 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 productive forces of the feudal era, and it is impossible to achieve it in one step and once and for all.However, that is either something to be done in the next reform in the future, or it is not even something he can see in his highly pragmatic life. We can only believe that later people will have enough political wisdom to solve it.

After the "detailed description" was submitted, the emperor waited for another two days, but the emperor still did not give a reply, but he called Gao Yushi into the palace for a face-to-face detailed discussion for an afternoon.Afterwards, the Supervisor of Rituals finally approved the proposal. Although it did not agree to implement it nationwide, it allowed "the northern and southern Zhili to take the lead in piloting."

This practice seems to have become the standard configuration of the practical school's reform in the past 20 years.Starting from the Gao Gong era, many reform measures of the Practical School were carried out as pilot projects first, and gradually promoted after the experimental results were good.This time, the reform of high-level pragmatism to increase the salary of named officials and implement the tax-sharing system has also followed this routine, which is not bad.

This major reform, which actually had a huge impact, turned the page calmly with the acquiescence of the whole court, and just as the dust settled, the North Korean side suddenly sent a memorial requesting canonization.

Of course, the one to be canonized is not the king of North Korea, Li Yan. He has been the king for many years, and he was canonized by Ming as early as the beginning of his enthronement.

Now North Korea is asking Daming to enshrine the crown prince, that is, Li Hun, Lord Gwanghae. However, this request was not sent by Li Yan, but after Lord Li Hun of Guanghai was crowned as the son of the crown by Li Yan and led the division of the dynasty, the courtiers of the division They made a list and gave it to Daming.

Zhu Yijun also attached great importance to the orthodoxy of the prince of the vassal state, and immediately summoned all the cabinet ministers in the Wenhua Palace to ask the elders of the cabinet for their opinions.

Originally, Gao Yushi thought that he would become a minority in this matter because he opposed Gwanghae-kun being the heir of North Korea. However, judging from the current precarious situation in North Korea, it seems that Gwanghae-kun's performance is still a bit "human master". ", so the rest of the court elders may support the canonization of Gwanghae-jun as the son of Joseon.

Unexpectedly, the result was a big surprise, all the cabinet ministers expressed their opposition to the canonization of Lord Guanghai, but the reasoning was completely different from what Gao Yushi thought.They think that although Li Yan has no sons at present, Mr. Guanghai still has an older brother, so how can he be established instead of the eldest son?It just doesn't make sense!
In the eyes of the Ming cabinet, the principle of "If there is a descendant, there will be a descendant, and if there is no descendant, there will be an elder" must not be broken!As for the rumors that the King of Linhai in North Korea, Li Juan, fell into the hands of Japanese pirates and may no longer be alive, the cabinet of the Ming Dynasty stated that he must see people when he was alive, and his corpse when he died.

Although Gao Yushi looked at the fact that Mr. Guanghai could not be the son from another angle, since everyone has such a clear attitude now, he would not want to "stand alone", and he also expressed his agreement with this attitude.

After Zhu Yijun expressed his views one by one among the ministers in the cabinet, he made another patch out of his own psychology, saying: "What you dear friends said is very true. I also think that the dignity of the concubine and the concubine cannot be messed up. Since the eldest son of the king Still alive, how can there be any reason for the younger brother to be sealed as a reserve?

Besides, the king of Joseon, Li Yan, is still in his prime, and there is a possibility that he will give birth to a son in the future. If I canonize Li Hun at this time, and the king of Joseon has another son born at that time, how will I deal with the court? "

Of course Gao Yushi knew the emperor's careful thoughts, and the rest of the elders of the court knew it too, but everyone didn't point it out. Gao Yushi even took the initiative to say: "There is no heir and the emperor is not old. It is the right way to reserve a position first."

Zhu Yijun clapped his hands in satisfaction, and said, "That's right, this is the right way! Mr. Shen, please make a reply according to this meaning."
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(End of this chapter)