Daming Yuanfu

Gao Pragmatic has always insisted that reform should be done step by step. This is not because he does not know which production methods are more suitable for social productivity in this period, but because he knows that the system of the Ming Dynasty has problems and is a deformity right from the mother's womb. Son, when reforming it, we cannot use strong medicine at the beginning, because doing so is more likely to lead to the result that although the disease seems to be cured, the life will be lost before the disease is cured.

When Zhu Yuanzhang founded the People's Republic of China, he established the following national mobilization system: First, the households managed by the Ministry of Household Affairs, which provided tax revenue for the country. The tax revenue from the Ministry of Household Affairs was mainly used to support the royal family and the civil service system; the second one was managed by the Ministry of War and the Guard System. Military households do not need to pay taxes to the civilian system, but they are required to fight for the country for free and hand over grain to the guards officers as military rations; the third is the craftsmen households managed by the Ministry of Industry. In theory, craftsmen households are also tax-free, but they need to Working for the country for free, the military duty is to manufacture weapons and various military equipment for the country for free, and build city walls and other military facilities for free.

Zhu Yuanzhang once said proudly: "I can raise millions of soldiers without costing the common people a grain of rice."In other words, Zhu Yuanzhang never thought of relying on taxes to support the army from the beginning. The military power in the early Ming Dynasty was mainly maintained by the corvee service of military households and craftsmen households. The cost of raising troops and military rations were mainly met by military camps, and then by the Ministry of Industry. The craftsmen produced military equipment and military facilities for free.

Ideally, this way the tax dollars would not have to be used for military spending.However, the military mobilization system with the military household system and the craftsman household system as its core could not be maintained by the mid-Ming Dynasty.

In terms of military households, starting from the mid-Ming Dynasty, a large number of low-level guard military households went bankrupt and fled. Even if there were no fleeing military households, most of them did not have enough to eat and basically had no fighting capacity.

One thing must be emphasized here: the Wei system established by Zhu Yuanzhang was not destroyed by civilian officials, but by the continuous proliferation and growth of hereditary military attaches and the military-registered scholar-bureaucrats who "Wu Zhuanwen".

For example, during the Hongwu period, Weihaiwei had only one commander, one colleague, and two ministers. As a result, by the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, there were as many as eighteen families qualified for hereditary command!In addition, a family with a hereditary military officer position also has many scholars, candidates, and even a Jinshi master!

May I ask how much land does one Weihaiwei have that can be divided among so many "renshangren"?A bunch of hereditary military attachés and military-registered officials don’t have enough land to allocate, so where is the extra land to allocate to military households?After all, how big was Weihaiwei during the Hongwu period, wouldn't it still be that big by the end of the Ming Dynasty?
The guard system of the Ming Dynasty and the land equalization system of the Han and Tang dynasties were the aforementioned military service systems based on land enfeoffment. They were the main foundations of social mobilization in the early Han, Tang, and Ming dynasties.

The obvious objective reality is that with the expansion of population and the annexation of land, the land military service system gradually collapsed, and the late Han, Tang, and Ming dynasties were all forced to choose the military recruitment system.Since we need to recruit soldiers, we can no longer count on corvee service, so the cost of raising soldiers in the Ming Dynasty began to shift from corvee service to taxation.

This is the inevitable law of population expansion and land annexation in China's unified feudal dynasty in a long-term peaceful environment. The Ming Dynasty's guard system, the Han Dynasty's conscription system, and the Tang Dynasty's military system all declined in this way, and it is inevitable Avoided.

As for craftsmen, the industry and commerce in the early Ming Dynasty had not recovered their vitality after years of war and destruction by the Mongols, so it was appropriate for craftsmen to serve in the military and add government-run handicrafts.But by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there were actually no craftsmen in the true sense.As early as the 41st year of Jiajing, craftsmen no longer worked shifts, but instead collected silver, and the court hired workers in silver.

In the same way, the production of military equipment and the construction of military facilities have also changed from corvee to "tax + labor" model, which is also inevitable for the development of commodity economy.In places like Jiangnan where industry and commerce are very prosperous, this situation is even more prominent. A large number of craftsmen households have transformed into industrial and commercial businesses, while the government-run handicraft industry in the imperial court has gradually declined due to the lack of good craftsmen.

To sum up, it will be found that the military power of the Ming Dynasty was mainly maintained by two types of people. One was military households and craftsmen who were required to perform military service and did more corvee service but were theoretically tax-free. The other was those who did not perform military service, performed less corvee service, and more Households that pay taxes.It should be said that the principle of "taxation" in the early Ming Dynasty was relatively fair - basically "if you have money, pay, and if you have power, contribute". You either served as a soldier and worked more, or you didn't serve as a soldier but paid more taxes.

This principle also applies to officials and gentry in the early Ming Dynasty - unlike the "Ming Dynasty history" that many modern people hear and hear, the Ming Dynasty did not have a "tax-free" policy for officials and gentry in theory. Land taxes and other taxes.Moreover, land tax was collected based on the amount of land owned by the gentry, which was in line with the principle of "if you don't do corvee, you pay more tax."

But the problem is that later the corvee turned into paying people (to the government) to hire people to serve on their behalf, and it became a de facto "capital tax". Therefore, the exemption of corvee for officials and gentry gave people the illusion of "tax exemption".This is why Yongzheng later implemented the "official and gentry integrated grain payment" model by promoting the "dividing a small family into an acre" model.

Because some officials abused their privileges and protected their seven aunts and eight aunts from doing corvee service, the Ming Dynasty formulated rules for exemptions and exemptions. The general idea was that which grade you were in and how much exemption you could get were all set for you, and you could not exceed them.Of course, as I have said many times before in this book, the longer the system is implemented, the looser it will become. In the end, although the system still exists, it only exists on paper, and the implementation level is almost nonexistent.

In terms of land tax, in the early Ming Dynasty, only a small number of Beijing officials were exempted from tax. The purpose was to offset the meager salaries of Beijing officials.It also has a limit and cannot exempt much tax. Its nature is to use a limited tax exemption limit to offset the underpaid wages.

Later, the exemption limit gradually expanded. In the Zhengde period, the exemption limit for first-grade officials was [-] acres. In the Wanli period, it became even more powerful, and the exemption limit reached [-] acres. But there is still a limit. Most officials and gentry theory No matter how much you pay, you have to pay some tax.

Of course, those like Gao Gong who "have self-stored to join the Jun axis, and the land and house have not increased in size for 30 years" may not be able to meet the tax limit, but such people are really in the minority.After all, even Gao Pragmatic has far more than [-] acres of farmland under his name - although the fields he bought are all used for testing new crops, the excess is the excess, and the excess must be taxed... However, he pays taxes to set an example. According to the current environment, there are many ways for him to avoid paying taxes.

Some people in later generations calculated based on research (Note: "Estimation of Tax Exemptions for Famous Persons in the Ming Dynasty and Discussion on Taxation in the Ming Dynasty") that the legally tax-free cultivated land of the Ming Dynasty gentry was less than 2% of the total cultivated land in the country. What impact will it have on North Korea's finances?Judging from the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty, the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty during the Xuande period was approximately 2700 million shi, and the agricultural tax in the sixth year of Wanli was approximately 2670 million shi, which was similar to that of the early Ming Dynasty.

But the problem remains, the provisions are one set, and the actual operation is another.In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the tax-free privileges of the landowners and gentry were abused, and the quota became a decoration.Coupled with the "arrears" of taxes and various methods of exploiting loopholes such as cheating, spending, spending money, and cheating, the officials and gentry of the Ming Dynasty actually paid less taxes.Not only those with official positions and imperial examination achievements can be exempted from tax, but even local powerful factions without any official positions or imperial examination achievements can also be exempted from tax.

But no matter how you put it, according to the law, the tax exemption for most Ming Dynasty gentry was not legal, and the nature of it was to use their power to "evade tax."What Gao Wuzhen wants to do now cannot be said to be to completely overhaul the land tax system of the Ming Dynasty, but to plug the "tax evasion". Moreover, he does not want to accomplish this matter overnight, but to start with the army's land.As for why officials and gentry can evade taxes?Because "imperial power did not extend to counties," tax collection was handled by local squires.Since the gentry and local powerful factions are allowed to "collect taxes for free" on behalf of the court, it is inevitable that the gentry and local powerful factions will take advantage of them.

During the Tatar Qing Dynasty, the eunuchs who bought eggs for the emperor could increase the price of eggs from three cents to 30 taels even if they were paid. The gentry and local powerful people who collected taxes for "free" in the Ming Dynasty did tax evasion without being paid. Isn’t this a matter of course?There is no free lunch in this world - anyone who has played online games knows that free is the most expensive!

Some people may ask, since the officials and gentry have been evading taxes, why were they able to receive taxes before the Ming Dynasty?Why was tax evasion among the gentry and local elites not so serious in the past?Because several major events happened in the late Ming Dynasty.

The first major event was the massive bankruptcy of the "middle class" of the Ming Dynasty.

Like the unified feudal dynasties such as the Han and Tang dynasties, the Ming Dynasty had a large "middle class" composed mainly of self-cultivators in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. These people bore the main tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty.But by the end of the Ming Dynasty, as the "middle class", mainly owner-peasants, went bankrupt in large numbers, the officials and gentry responsible for actual tax collection could no longer find enough "middle class" to bear the taxes for the court.Not only did farmers go bankrupt in large numbers and had no money to pay agricultural taxes, but also ordinary industrialists and businessmen without official or gentry backgrounds and urban civilians went bankrupt in large numbers.

Farmers went bankrupt due to land annexation, while industrialists, businessmen and urban civilians were bankrupted by the deceptive "comprador" system of the Ming Dynasty.In the Ming Dynasty, "compradors" specifically referred to merchants who supplied supplies to the palace and government. They were forced "merchant servants" and a type of corvee.

Compared with in-kind tribute, "comprador" was originally a progressive method that conformed to the development of market economy. However, because the Ming Dynasty officials may pay less or even not pay when "purchasing" materials, this created a problem for the merchant class in the late Ming Dynasty. and bring serious disasters to urban civilians.

During the Longqing period, Gao Gong, a bachelor, once said that he witnessed with his own eyes that in the alleys of the "merchants and compradors", "there are those who sell their children with homes worth tens of thousands, some whose houses are full of streets and demolished, and some who lurk in the streets." Those who fled and hid there again, some dispersed in all directions and migrated to the ravines, some lost their homes and cried in the Tao, some had their heads shaved and became monks, some had plans and nothing to do but hanged themselves in a well and died, and the rich houses were no longer there. ".

During the Wanli period, the imperial court implemented a completely compulsory "comrades-for-comrades" policy for merchants, and then there were "people who escaped one after another, even shaving their heads and breaking their necks, and cutting their daughters in the street"; "some hanged themselves and threw themselves into the river"; "the rich all threw themselves into It is necessary to avoid him in every possible way, and those who are unable to survive will be killed for several generations."

During the Chongzhen period, these conditions not only did not improve, but even worsened.Due to the war, the imperial court continued to implement the "comrades" system of grain and grass supply to the peasants, which caused countless businessmen, big and small, to "strike their vertebrae and marrow, seize the land and scream at the heavens, suffering heavy losses and suffering for a while."The result is a decline in business, which brings the entire economy to a standstill and further intensifies social conflicts.

In the late Ming Dynasty in original history, in addition to "equalizing land and freeing grain", the most popular slogan of Li Zicheng's Dashun regime was "buying and selling on equal terms" and "fair trade" for merchants and urban civilians.The more sober officials in the imperial court, such as Sun Chuanting, also realized that "to suppress the bandits, we must first stabilize the people", and when rectifying the administration of officials, they required "comrades for daily necessities, and no loss-making households".

The industry and commerce under the name of the gentry paid no taxes or paid less tax, and the industry and commerce without the protection of the gentry generally went bankrupt under the plunder of the Ming Dynasty officials. It would be strange if Chongzhen could receive a large amount of business taxes at this time!

In other words, in the Ming Dynasty, there had always been "compradors", a kind of bad "commercial tax" that was similar to "property raids". Finally, in the Chongzhen Dynasty, almost all industries and commerce that had no protection from officials and gentry and could receive taxes were squeezed out. .

The most typical case in this regard is that in 1643, Chongzhen tried to save the Ming Dynasty's finances by printing new banknotes. However, at that time, the Ming Dynasty could not even collect the "banknote paper" needed to print new banknotes - 5000 million ingots of new banknotes were printed. It was estimated that 200 million kilograms of mulberry were needed, but at that time there were frequent floods and droughts in the south and north of the Yangtze River, and so many raw materials could not be provided at all.Hearing that so many raw materials had to be handed over, people from paper households and umbrella shops in the south of the Yangtze River fled one after another. "Nine out of ten households in Zhejiang and Zhejiang were shocked."In the end, Chongzhen's "money printing and finance" had not yet been implemented, and the Ming Dynasty perished.

Until the early years of the Qing Dynasty, with the death of a large number of people, the contradiction between man and land was alleviated, and a new class of self-cultivated farmers emerged.At the same time, as the deceptive "comprador" system perished with the Ming Dynasty, the industrial, commercial and urban "middle" classes also recovered.So new tax-paying leeks grew again.

However, Gao Wuchen no longer has to worry about this issue, because he has abolished this comprador system in his previous commercial tax reform.The reason is simple: all businessmen have paid business taxes in accordance with the new law, so of course the court cannot double tax, so the compradors that originally existed as local tribute must be abolished.

Therefore, no matter whether it is the court or the palace, if you want to buy something, you can no longer lower the price like before, or you can't pay at all, but you must buy it at the market price.Among them, the court's purchases need to be reviewed by the Audit Office of the Ministry of Household Affairs. The palace...

Well, Gao Pragmatic nominally has no control over matters in the palace, but the Audit Office will conduct spot checks on merchants and also allow merchants to report.If the purchasers in the palace profited from it, Gao Jingshi would not tolerate them, and the emperor would not deny Gao Jingshi face just because of this small profit.As for the subsequent institutionalization of fair procurement in the palace, this matter still needs to wait for a suitable opportunity. At present, it is more important to establish the "Audit Office's supervision of palace procurement" as a routine.

So, since this major event has little impact on the Ming Dynasty, which has been changed by Gao Pragmatism, what else has a big impact?This is about military honors and generals groups.
-
Thanks to book friends "Lilin00" and "doni" for their monthly support, thank you!
PS: This year has been really troubled. I was infected with COVID-[-] at the beginning of the year, and not long ago I was infected with mycoplasma. Just a few days ago, I got influenza A again... A influenza is also very strange. The symptoms of the three people in the family are different. The child has a runny nose. But I am in good spirits. My wife has nothing else but is weak and lacks energy and is afraid of the cold. I have a cough with thick phlegm and alternately hot and cold.Good guy, what kind of virus is this like Variety Star King?