The Ming Dynasty talker in the box

Chapter 19 Assessment of Zhu Youjian
Li Hengqu walked to Zhu Youjian and handed him the leg of lamb. Zhu Youjian hesitated for a moment and took it. After all, the emperor is the emperor, and eating is eating.

Li Hengqu dragged the box over and sat on it carelessly. Then he patted the side and motioned to Zhu Youjian to sit down with him. You're welcome.

Zhu Youjian sat on the box, looking at the distance of the sea, chewing the mutton in his mouth, and sighed unconsciously as he ate, even the tender mutton had no taste.

"Before I was sent to this island, I heard that Li Zicheng was not looking for Emperor Chongzhen in Beijing. Do you think he secretly moved south?"

Li Hengqu asked without any warning. He decided not to reveal Zhu Youjian's identity yet.

Zhu Youjian shook his fingers and the leg of lamb fell to the sand, but he quickly concealed his emotions, picked up the leg of lamb, wiped it casually, and put it aside.

"The Ming Dynasty did not claim vassal status or pay tribute, and had a tradition of the emperor guarding the country. Emperor Chongzhen naturally inherited this kind of integrity. How could he abandon his ancestors' power and choose to move south?"

"In other words, you think Emperor Chongzhen never considered moving south before Li Zicheng marched to Beijing?"

"Of course it is." Zhu Youjian said calmly.

Hey, you really don't have a blushing face or a beating heart. I saw with my own eyes that during that period, you asked me this question almost every day:
Is there still hope for moving south?Li Hengqu guessed that he would deny it, but he didn't expect that he could say it so righteously, so he thought highly of him.

"Then if, I mean if, Emperor Chongzhen really moves to Nanjing, do you think he can still save the Ming Dynasty?"

"Of course!"

"Oh, what do you think?"

"Beijing fell, and it was the fault of its treacherous officials. If Emperor Chongzhen moved to Nanjing, he would first clean up the officials and punish the treacherous officials. When the government and the public are clear, the army can be organized and ready to recover the lost territory."

"Didn't Emperor Chongzhen do this during the 17 years he spent in the Forbidden City?"

········Zhu Youjian was choked. If he admitted that he did this during his reign, but the Ming Dynasty still perished, this shows that his measures were ineffective.

If you don't admit it, what have you been doing for the past 17 years?
Seeing his silence, Li Hengqu said calmly:
"If Emperor Chongzhen really purges officials and punishes traitors in Nanjing, as you say, then he will fall into endless quarrels with ministers, and the 17 years he spent in Beijing will still be staged in Nanjing."

"Then what do you think Emperor Chongzhen should do to save the Ming Dynasty?" Zhu Youjian was a little embarrassed and angry.

"If you want to save Ming Dynasty, you must first figure out what went wrong with Ming Dynasty."

"Then what happened to Ming Dynasty?" Zhu Youjian asked.

"Lack of money, very special lack of money." Li Hengqu said.

"I know this, but if you don't have money, you have no money. Can you make Emperor Chongzhen conjure money?"

"Emperor Chongzhen can break away from the thinking of taxpayers and tax land and make the pie bigger."

"Make the cake bigger?" Zhu Youjian was a little confused.

"Emperors always think about how to rob society's stock resources in a stable environment, rather than making the pie bigger and finding ways to increase it."

"You must know that land and population are limited. These are stock resources. The ceiling of stock resources is too easy to reach. No matter how the court reforms, it is impossible to create flowers."

"So relying solely on taxation and land taxation to make money is far from enough for the finances of a huge empire, and it is difficult to cope with major accidents."

"What a country should pursue is not only financial stability, but also fiscal expansion, and it must make the pie bigger!"

"We need to make the pie bigger!" Zhu Youjian fell into deep thought. "Yes, so do you know how to make the pie bigger?" Li Hengqu expected him to tell the answer.

"Develop business!" A clear female voice sounded, and Long Jiu came to them at some point.

Li Hengqu smiled and said: "That's right. It is indeed about developing commerce, but it is not just about developing commerce."

Long Jiu asked in confusion: "Huh? What does this mean?"

“Actually, the Ming Dynasty’s commercial exchanges were still very developed. Today, the Ming Dynasty accounts for three of the four major commodities in international trade: spices, silk, porcelain and tea.

A considerable part of the world's silver flows into the Ming Dynasty, but the government is still very poor. Do you know why? "

Long Jiu thought for a moment: "Because the imperial court's taxation focus is not on commercial taxation?"

"Smart." Li Hengqu nodded.

"But the imperial court must know about such a large amount of money. Why doesn't it take it seriously?" Long Jiu asked curiously.

"It should be said that the imperial court attaches great importance to it. The imperial court has set up many complicated tax systems for collecting commercial taxes, such as residence tax and transit tax."

"In addition, the imperial court also established a banknote checkpoint and a bamboo and wood scoring bureau to collect shipping materials tax and bamboo and wood scoring respectively, as well as customs duties collected by the Municipal Shipping Department."

“But the imperial court still cannot collect taxes because officials and dignitaries do not need to pay taxes, and those giant businessmen either rely on them or collude with them to resist the government’s collection.

"Most of the government's business taxes come from small traders and craftsmen, and these are small amounts of money that cannot change the financial situation at all."

"So we must collect taxes from those big merchants. Only in this way can we solve the financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty." Long Jiu said firmly.

Zhu Youjian snorted coldly:
"Collecting business taxes from these giant businessmen is no less difficult than collecting taxes from the gentry. Now that the Ming Dynasty is unstable, government decrees cannot be issued, let alone implemented."

Li Heng channels:

"Actually, the imperial court has never made up its mind to do this, because these merchants and dignitaries are not easy to bully, so the emperors changed to a better target to bully: the common people! This is actually a kind of lazy thinking at work."

Zhu Youjian was a little dissatisfied:

"Okay, even if what you said is correct, then tell me how the court can collect commercial taxes without causing political instability?"

Li Hengqu thought for a moment and replied:
"In fact, it was never the gentry that caused political instability, but the common people who were incited by the gentry."

"The most direct way to do this is to transform the fiscal system from land tax to commercial tax."

"It is necessary to fully liberalize commercial activities, formulate systematic and complete commercial tax policies, and gradually reduce or even eliminate land tax in the process."

"However." Li Hengqu added:
"Then what's the difference between this and Li Zicheng?"

"Li Zicheng is still following the path of taxing people and taxing land. He ultimately has to rely on the squires to collect taxes for him, so he can't completely offend the squires to death." Li Hengqu cleared his throat:
"And what happened to Li Zicheng? Emperor Chongzhen could have done Li Zicheng himself!"

Make it yourself Li Zicheng!Zhu Youjian took a breath: "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

　There is a setting that you may not have noticed, which is that things in the real world will be amplified when they arrive in the reverse world, but things in the reverse world will not change when they enter the reverse world through boxes, because they are originally things from the same world, so don’t think about it. The protagonist can make unlimited money and food in the reverse world!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)