Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2085 Where did the Zhengguo (fifty) money go

Gao Wushi’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 from the people”—it’s just that the Ming Dynasty did not want to hide wealth from the people’s subjective will. , but the supreme ruler of the court was fooled and lame, and passively hid wealth from the people, and the hiding was very serious and exaggerated.

Whether it is serious or exaggerated, it is necessary to use such a word for comparison, but at this time the Taqing does not exist, and the Taqing is a deformed regime in which the minority ruled the majority. Some aspects are not comparable, so we still have to take It is fair to compare with the previous Han Dynasty.

There is no doubt that the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty have one thing in common, that is, they are both feudal countries dominated by agriculture. Although this seems like nonsense, it is very important, and I will talk about it later.

In terms of control over the country, the Song Dynasty is slightly stronger than the Ming Dynasty. Both the registered population and the number of acres of registered land are larger than the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, although the Song Dynasty seems to have far more officials than the Ming Dynasty, they are actually parasitic on the country. On the contrary, there were fewer privileged classes, so the Song Dynasty had greater potential to tap at the financial level.

In terms of the external situation, the situation of the Ming Dynasty is a little better than that of the Song Dynasty. It has almost no major enemies except for a very few eras.

After all, the Mongols themselves were divided, and their power was not concentrated. The border troubles caused to the Ming Dynasty were actually limited, and they could only be regarded as "border" troubles—so when Alta Khan entered the pass and approached the capital, the Ming court That's why he was so surprised and nervous, and the border ministers and town commanders came up with so many tricks to kill him.

Why?Because everyone really didn't expect that the right-wing Mongolia, which was still dying a few years ago, could actually cheat corpses after changing to a Khan.

Therefore, despite the occasional wars on the border of the Ming Dynasty, the scale is actually very small, and the cost of foreign wars in the Ming Dynasty before Wanli was relatively small.And if we look at the current high-practical situation after nearly 30 years of tossing, after the full development of Japan, North Korea, and Southeast Asian markets, the Ming Dynasty can obtain more external resources, and its overall economic strength today is definitely 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 income of the imperial court mainly depended on digging stocks, because before the industrial revolution, the so-called industry today can only be regarded as handicrafts in the final analysis, and the social wealth and industrial wealth directly created by handicrafts The social wealth created by the machine industry after the revolution cannot be regarded as equal at all.

The first industrial revolution does not need to be explained. 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 has exploded.

It is a pity that although Gao Yushi taught the principle of the steam engine a long time ago, Jinghua still has not understood the steam engine until now, so he always talked about the large-scale use of the steam engine to future generations as if it depended on Watt's aura I was very angry that the technological upgrade was completed as soon as I discovered it - Watt was obviously just an improvement, without the foundation laid by those before Watt, how could this steam engine be so easy to make?

In short, in this era, except for a very small number of countries that make a living by robbing grass valleys or digging gold and silver mines on the ground, most countries still have to rely on extracting domestic resources to maintain themselves.On this point, not to mention the Ming Dynasty, the feudal dynasties in the history of China counted as one, and I am afraid that they are not as capable as the Song Dynasty.

In other words, only the Song Dynasty can take a little bit of benefits from the rich, while other dynasties basically have nothing.Of course, on the issue of excavating stock, the level of the Ming Dynasty as a whole is still average. The Eastern Han Dynasty and Sui and Tang Dynasties in the powerful era may be the real hardest hit areas. This will not be mentioned for the time being.

Or compare the Song and Ming dynasties, and give a few examples to experience it.

Take the salt tax, for example.In the Northern Song Dynasty, salt production in Yancheng and Taizhou accounted for about half of the country’s total. According to statistics, the annual output of Huai salt was a little over 90 yin, so it is estimated that the national salt production at that time was roughly around 200 million yin.

One quotation is 116.5 Song Jin (Note: This is according to the records of "Song History Tonghuo Zhi", Yan Yin each receives 116.5 Jin of salt, and the price is 6 Guan.), which is equivalent to 149 Shi Jin.In this way, the annual salt production in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 3 million catties.

The court of the Song Dynasty sold salt to salt merchants for 6 guan, and since the total was 200 million yin, the salt tax was 1200 million guan per year.It is known that the peak salt tax in the Northern Song Dynasty was as high as 1300 million guan, which is a little higher than this theoretical value. It can be seen that the collection of salt tax in the Northern Song Dynasty is relatively reliable.

So what about the salt production in the Ming Dynasty?According to the "Gang Salt System" of the Ming Dynasty: merchants who hold salt coins are divided into 10 classes according to the region. ", another three taels of silver for tax, and three taels of silver for envoys (transportation).

It can be seen that the annual salt output of the Ming Dynasty was 6 million catties. At that time, one catty was equivalent to 596 grams in later generations, and the total amount was equivalent to 6.72 million catties in later generations. Considering that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty doubled that of the Northern Song Dynasty, the salt production also doubled , it fits exactly.

Since the ratio of population to output is about the same, let's look at the final income.The salt tax income of the Ming court is: for every 6 taels, 6 qian and 4 cents of silver, it should get 1328 million taels of silver, but... in fact, even at the most, it was only 250 million taels of silver.

That is, the Ming Dynasty produced about twice as much salt as the Northern Song Dynasty, but the salt tax revenue was only one-fifth of that of the Northern Song Dynasty.Comparing the two, regarding the single item of salt, if the Song and Ming dynasties 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 catty of salt in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 120 Wen, and in the Ming Dynasty, a catty of salt was often three coins of silver, equivalent to 360 Wen.

What a wonderful thing, when the actual salt tax collected by the Ming Dynasty was only one-tenth of that of the Song Dynasty, the retail price was three times higher than that of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Let me talk about a more funny thing: In feudal dynasties in Chinese history, except for the fact that the last dynasties were particularly ruthless when the last dynasty was about to end, the taxes in other peaceful times would often be greatly reduced as the country developed and the people became rich. Only the Song Dynasty was an exception to this rule.

I won’t introduce how taxes were raised in the Song Dynasty due to the limited space here. Anyway, during the 300 years of the Song Dynasty, it was possible to raise it almost every few decades for various reasons.

In other dynasties, such as the Ming Dynasty, Hongwu collected 26 million shi in 2800 years of grain, 120 million pieces of cloth, 30 jin of silk, 766 million coins, 2000 million shi in military settlements, and other messy tax collections in kind. Add it all together, and there will be a tax of 8000 to [-] million guan, which is similar to that in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty.

As a result, in the reign of Hongzhi, the world expropriated 1956 million shi of rice, 677 million shi of wheat, 36700 jin of silk, 115 million bolts of cloth, 8842 million guan of banknotes, 7300 million guan of miscellaneous banknotes, and 293 million shi of military grain... except for the Daming Treasure In addition to the increase in banknotes, other items have declined in varying degrees.

For example, Juntun is only one-seventh of that of Hongwu Dynasty, silk is one-tenth of that of Hongwu Dynasty, and the overall taxation is only two-thirds of that of Hongwu Dynasty.Do you think this is miserable?No, no, it's not bad, because after another few decades, the military colony is completely gone, Mao... no, there is not even a straw left.By the time of the Jiajing Dynasty, only two-thirds of the Hongzhi Dynasty remained, and even less than half of the Hongwu Dynasty.

You see, what does it mean to hide wealth from the people, and what does it mean to make the country rich for the poor?The Ming Dynasty is mighty.

Of course, there is a more mainstream saying in later generations, that is, when the agricultural tax was similar, and even the Ming Dynasty was stronger, the Song Dynasty's finances completely relied on commercial taxes to fight against the Ming Dynasty.This statement is generally correct, but I am afraid that some things have been ignored intentionally or unintentionally.

In the ten years of Xining, the total tax revenue of the Northern Song Dynasty was 7070 million guan, of which the agricultural tax was 2162 million guan, accounting for 30%, and the industrial and commercial tax was 4911 million guan, accounting for 70%. This is clearly recorded.

You must know that there were no large-scale military settlements in the Song Dynasty. As a result, the agricultural tax revenue of the Song Dynasty was only slightly lower than that of the Ming Dynasty, but what about commercial taxes?The commercial tax in the Song Dynasty was more than twice as high as the agricultural tax. On the other hand, the commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty... It cannot be said that everything is full of vitality, but it can only be said that negligible is better than nothing.

According to folk notes preserved by later generations, Sun Kegong, a cloth merchant from Songjiang, sold cloth to Beijing. He had to go through dozens of checkpoints along the way, and each checkpoint had 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 cloth at a high price.

However, the problem is that most of the local cloth business in Beijing at that time was privately stolen by eunuchs in the palace for takeaway. The cost was so low that regular merchants could not compete at all. In the end, Boss Sun could only take shelter of his relatives and started smuggling. ——Because after sheltering your relatives, there are far fewer people who want to eat and drink, or even basically none.

So when it comes to this, it can actually explain why Jinghua rose so rapidly in the early days.Jinghua’s owner, Gao Wushi, was the nephew of Gao Gong, the first assistant at that time, and one of the two later chief assistants was his teacher and the other was his uncle.At the same time, his partner is either a father-in-law or a marquis, or even an uncle, and these people are all from the Jingnan family, not those idle nobles in Nanjing.

Under such a background, no matter Hades or the kid, which one can be so short-sighted and dare to find Jinghua's head when eating Naka?Without these huge invisible expenditures, Jinghua's commercial competitiveness naturally needless to say.

In the same way, this also explains why Gao Wushi insisted that although the gang of nobles seemed useless, they still had to be listed as the first batch of allies he needed to win over.

Maybe people's ability is really not good, but the world's morals can never be understood by ability alone.Still the same sentence, all monsters without backstage were beaten to death with a stick, and all monsters with backstage were taken back by their masters to continue to live freely.

Journey to the West?It's just a record of the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty.

It's just that Gao Yu has a good background, and this kind of nasty things don't come across him at all-of course, he encounters other things.

All in all, comparing the Song and Ming dynasties, we can basically find out where the problem lies: how much did the subordinate officials who copied and collected taxes collect?Where did it go?What account?God only knows.

I really should praise the subordinate officials of the Ming Dynasty. They did not receive a penny from the imperial court, but they worked hard all the time. They did not change jobs or run away. Centennial tax.I have to say that this kind of self-serving spirit is really... indescribable.

Now that 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 there is no way to count the number of court servants in the third class of the dynasty.

Moreover, most of the subordinate officials in the Ming Dynasty were not even the so-called "three classes of yamen servants". They were just "helpers", but non-staff personnel hired by officials (and eunuchs) "out of their own pockets" - Gao Yushi mentioned just now .

The actual number of these people may be more than ten times that of the third class of yamen servants.It is precisely because of the existence of this group of people that although the taxes of the Ming Dynasty were set very low from the court level, they were actually not light at all when they reached various places. If they were really light, they would not be overthrown by peasant uprisings .

It was mentioned earlier in this book that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty may have exceeded 5000 million, but some people said it was wrong, because according to historical records, it was only more than 200 million.Hmm... so there was no major war in the Ming Dynasty for [-] years, so the population is almost the same as that of the founding period?
The truth is, the yellow books and fish-scale atlases created during the Zhu Yuanzhang era have been left alone for a long time since they were locked on the small island in Nanjing, and they have almost rotted away, and none of the subsequent emperors was interested in conducting a national census— - It's useless if the emperor wants to do it, and the officials will not agree - so a very strange phenomenon appeared: the national population announced by the imperial court will always fluctuate a little bit above and below the Hongwu standard.

Note that it can only fluctuate a little bit, absolutely not too much, and the population changes of each province can only fluctuate a little bit, because if there are too many changes, then you have to worry that the emperor may adjust the tax after thinking about it-this is absolutely impossible. No way.

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 population is not as large as the registered population of the Song Dynasty, and the number of acres of registered land is not as large as that of the Song Dynasty. There are too many to count.

Logically speaking, the agricultural tax base of the Ming Dynasty is obviously lower than that of the Song Dynasty, but in fact, the actual collection of agricultural taxes in the Ming Dynasty is more than that of the Song Dynasty... Although the Ming Dynasty did not have the ability to increase the tax rate and squeeze the peasants, it did. There were not only officials and subordinate staff in the Ming Dynasty, but also a large number of them.

Therefore, don't 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 small, and there was also the commercial tax, which was a great supplement. However, the millions of royal descendants in the Ming Dynasty lived on the agricultural tax.If it hadn't been for Gao Yushi's prestige and Zhu Yijun's lack of money to fight the war a few years ago, he had abruptly settled the matter of opening the feudal ban, even if the household department has taken over the power, it would still be stretched often.

Therefore, Gao Pragmatism has always believed that the low revenue of the central government has little to do with the level of the basic tax rate. What matters more is the level of implementation of state tax collection and the level of auditing and supervision after collection.This is why he wants to train so many professionals who understand finance for the Ministry of Finance, and why he set up a separate audit office.

As for the fact that Gao Yushi now proposes to raise salaries to officials again through the "third-class system of outer ranks"... This requires understanding his usual behavior: first give benefits, and then let you work before you can speak.
-
Thank you book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your support, thank you!
Thanks to book friends "Nazgeer" and "First Login" for their monthly ticket support, thank you!
To correct, the thank you in the previous chapter is wrong, "Book Friends 20170107012220447" book friends voted for 9 monthly tickets, I may not have woken up at that time, I was dazzled to see 7 tickets, sorry.

(End of this chapter)