Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1532 Years ago (Part [-])
In terms of absolute value, the Ming court's annual revenue has been rising all these years.When Gao Gongqi returned to the court, the court’s annual revenue was only 308 million (he only arrived in Beijing at the end of the year, so the pot should belong to Xu Jie). (The first assistant is still Li Chunfang).

In the following year, that is, the sixth year of Longqing when Gao Gong was officially in charge of national affairs as the chief assistant, the imperial revenue rose directly to 384 million taels, which was an increase of about 50 taels compared to the fifth year of Longqing—you must know that at this time, Jinghua had not yet The increase in annual income is almost entirely a reflection of Gao Gong's own ability.

Needless to say, the chaos in the last years of Jiajing was a well-known fact, which led to the repayment of debts in the years of the Longqing era.The year Xu Jie resigned did not achieve balance of payments (some measures had been introduced before Gao Gong resigned), but the debts were reduced a lot.

It was not until the end of the sixth year of Longqing that the Ming court basically paid off the debts in the hands of Gao Gong (mainly reissuing the arrears over the years), and there was a surplus of about 18 taels, which is really gratifying.

In the Wanli period, Gao Gong was in power for six years, and Jinghua was gradually formed during this period.Northern Xinjiang opened, the coast opened to the sea, Jinghua Trading Co., Ltd. started border trade, and Jinghua Private Port opened ocean trade.Two-way trade is no longer limited to one or two "pilot sites".

In northern Xinjiang, apart from Zhangjiakou and other commercial gateways that have traditionally been used as trade gateways, Gaogong has almost fully opened the gateways suitable for trade along the borders of Tumed, Ordos, and Qinghai Tumed, with a total of 47 horse markets and private markets.

On the coast, apart from the earliest Yuegang in Fujian, Gaizhou (Yingkou), Yongping (Kaiping), Tianjin, Laizhou (the location of the North Factory of Jinghua Shipyard), Songjiang (Shanghai County), Ningbo and Quanzhou from north to south Private ports were built in Guangzhou and Guangzhou, and a large number of coastal smugglers began to gradually abandon smuggling and enter the port to do business legally.

In the year of Gao Gong's death, Daming's annual income had already reached 540 million taels (there was still about 40 taels of income that were not recorded in the account, which was a matter of measurement standards at the time, and Jinghua directly gave it to the royal family).

During Guo Pu's four years in power, the land trade did not change much, but after Gao Yushi went to Guangxi, Jinghua opened up the Yunnan-Tibet trade line, which slightly increased the annual income.

Maritime trade further developed, and the six major ports of Jinzhou (later Dalian), Jiaozhou (later Qingdao), Haizhou (later Lianyungang), Hangzhou, Leizhou, and Qinzhou continued to be opened from north to south.

In addition, the Guo Pu era basically completed the Qingzhang farm work that began in the Gao Gong era, and the advancement of a whip method was also basically completed.On the whole, by the time Guo Pu took the initiative to become an official, the imperial court's annual revenue had reached about 680 million taels.

In the subsequent Zhang Siwei era, land and sea trade did not expand too many barriers, but he focused on improving the imperial court's revenue on internal reforms.

Its two biggest work achievements, one is to promote the collection of business tax from north to south, breaking the long-term pattern of no business tax payment by the southern business gang (or very little payment, such as Jiangnan tea tax totaling four taels of silver, poof).

The second is that he made a good start for the reform of Daming's salt work, and actively expressed his intention to support the salt work reform to Gao Yushi.This is especially rare, because the Zhang family in Puzhou itself is one of the top salt merchants in Daming, almost monopolizing the Changlu salt field, the largest sea salt base in the north.

Although Zhang Siwei had been in power for too short a time, and he had to return to his hometown Ding You before his specific salt reform plan was launched, but his attitude of daring to use a knife against himself still impressed Gao Yushi.

However, the problem of salt affairs is a long-standing and chronic problem, and Gao Wushi dare not play a one-size-fits-all role—you can see how big the problem is by looking at how many transfer salt envoys were established in the Ming Dynasty.You know, each of these "transporting salt envoys" is a high-ranking official from the third rank!

Since ancient times, it has been easy to set up officials and difficult to dismiss them, so Gao Wushi had no choice but to join hands with the emperor to build a new salt field in the special military-controlled area-the Liaodong area. He planned to use commercial shocks as a means to forcibly disrupt the domestic salt affairs. A comprehensive reform of the structure will then be carried out.

So far, the salt problem persists and looks set to remain so for at least a few more years.However, although the Liaonan Salt Field has not completely disrupted the national salt affairs pattern for the time being, it has brought the emperor a huge income of 40 million taels per year, which has become another achievement recognized by the emperor for his pragmatism.

In fact, the income of three to four million taels a year is not an exaggeration.The emperor implemented a 40-70 split with Gao Pragmatism in the salt field in southern Liaoning (there is a special situation in Liaodong, that is, the land under military control is counted as the emperor's land, so the emperor bought the land from the salt field), which actually means that the annual profit of the salt field is more than [-] taels.

Is the salt farm with an income of more than 70 taels exaggerated?It is not an exaggeration, because the Changlu Salt Field is only part of Zhangjia in Puzhou, with an average of more than 300 million taels a year-of course, even when Zhang Siwei was in power, a large part of the income of the salt field required additional expenditures for management. , This may also be one of the main reasons why Zhang Siwei believes that the salt affairs must be reformed at the level of the chief assistant of the imperial court.

Of course, the real income of the Liaonan Saltworks is more than 70 taels. In fact, the high-level practicality is mainly due to the continuous expansion of the saltworks, but the work of the saltworks has its own peculiarities.In this era, there are no cheap rubber rain boots, and it is impossible for ordinary salt workers to wear leather boots (besides, leather can’t last long in heavy salt brine), so they all work barefoot.

It is self-evident that soaking bare feet in heavy salt brine is harmful to the human body, so the salt population across the country is actually very miserable.People in this era are almost used to this phenomenon, but Gao Yushi is a modern person after all. He feels that such a job that seriously endangers the human body cannot last for a long time, so he implemented a benevolent policy in the Liaonan Salt Works: a rotation system.

Specifically, a salt worker only works in the salt farm for one year, and in the next two years, he is responsible for farming (opening up wasteland to plant rice or corn in Hokkaido), and after two years, he goes to work in the salt farm for another year, and so on.

For this reason, the expansion of the Liaonan Salt Field is very expensive. It actually also has the function of a farm, and the manpower required far exceeds that of other salt fields in the country (but the system of other salt fields is different, and the owner of the salt field is not responsible for the specific production arrangements. They just purchased salt from salt households with the privilege of the salt law and sold it).

It is precisely because of the high cost of expansion that the share is reduced.However, Gao Wushi believes that this situation will improve soon, because when the rice and corn harvests in Hokkaido come up, there may be a large profit instead.

In this matter, the emperor's support is very important, because the farm land in the salt field depends on the "face" of the royal family-opening up wasteland according to the holy will not only enjoys the three-year exemption policy set by Gao Wu in Liaodong before, but also Tax rates are also low.

Originally, if these farms were calculated according to the Huangzhuang, they would not have to pay taxes at all, but Gao Yushi was very disgusted with the situation of not paying taxes. Back then, he persuaded the emperor to "return" a large number of Huangzhuang near the capital to the farmers (the installment payment redemption system ), so the current salt field farms also follow this approach.

To a certain extent, these farms have become "collective land", and the ownership is owned by the salt farm. Since the emperor and Gao Yushi each hold half of the shares in the salt farm, the salt farm farm itself pays half of the land tax—Gao Yushi didn't need to pay the land tax in the first place. However, he "set an example" early on and announced that his fields would pay taxes in full.

Although Gao Yushi doesn't like to buy land, he does have land in the Gao family. When buying mines in various places, since some valleys between several hills cannot be listed separately, they can only buy together.

In this way, because he bought a lot of mines, he actually became a big landlord by the way, but the land was very scattered, scattered everywhere, as broken as the small states of the Holy Roman Empire at this time.

The era of Zhang Siwei ended, and when Shen Shixing came to power, Jinghua was already an industrial giant of Ming Dynasty.At this time, because Southern Xinjiang and Daming actually opened up trade (Jinghua is a "domestic enterprise" of Daming and has the right to trade directly, so the southern Xinjiang area is actually equivalent to the mainland of Daming in terms of commerce), which led to a substantial increase in trade between the two sides.

Since the volume of trade has increased greatly, the income from tariffs and customs duties has also increased sharply. This is also the reason why Gao Pragmatism mentioned at the Pragmatic School gathering that the two tariffs have increased by 300 times from the "[-]" in the past, that is, It is said that the total amount of land and customs duties has exceeded [-] million taels.

At this time, the normal annual income of the whole country has increased to about 830 million taels, and after Gao Pragmatism led the Ministry of Households to collect power this year, the income withheld by local government offices has decreased a lot, and many incomes that were concealed in the past have also been collected by the Ministry of Households. As a result, the income of the household department has increased a lot, and it is expected to reach or approach tens of millions.

Moreover, Gao Wushi is not worried that the local government will starve to death, because he has proposed the method of "generating income" for the local government several years before that.This method is not difficult to say, but it is not easy to say: local officials should vigorously promote the development of commercial trade, and use the collection of commercial taxes as a means of increasing income.

The business tax in the current stage of the Ming Dynasty is divided into two parts, one is the national business tax, and the other is the local business tax, but the system between the two has not yet been determined. Originally, Gao Pragmatic intended to learn from the "tax sharing system" of the later Hong Dynasty. "It is still under planning, so the current Daming commercial tax is settled hastily according to the [-]-[-] split between the Ministry of Households and the local government.

Generally speaking, this approach is also in line with Gao Pragmatic's consistent reform thinking: to focus on benefit guidance, rather than relying on administrative pressure.

Although administrative pressure is an indispensable means at certain times, Gao Yushi always firmly believes that unilateral pressure does not exist, but any pressure will inevitably lead to a rebound, so it is necessary to be guided by interests at any time, and The latter is the main one.Otherwise, once the administrative pressure ends—no matter what the reason is, there will inevitably be a counterattack by the pressured party after the end.

The minimum guarantee is 830 million taels a year, and it may even reach tens of millions this year. Under such financial strength, Gao Yushi still hesitates to increase the expenditure of 45 taels of silver. Why?

Because with the increase in income, the various expenses of the Ming Dynasty also increased year by year.

Several major projects that have been mentioned many times before, such as the "buyout" of the clan, the construction of the imperial mausoleum, the storage of war preparations, the consolidation of border crossings (reinforcement of the Great Wall and the construction of new forts, the transformation of key areas into fortifications, etc.), the reform of official salaries , unified issuance of silver) and so on, all of them are big money eaters.

If it was 20 years ago, it can be said that none of the projects could have been done by the imperial court at that time. Didn’t you see that after the death of Emperor Longqing, Gao Gong actually decided to let him "live" in the building built by his father for his grandfather? Mausoleum?Given Gao Gong's feelings for Long Qing, he had to make such an expedient measure, not because the court really had no money, but why?
Now, however, the imperial court is strong enough to handle a number of major events at the same time.

In the 20 years of reform, the biggest change is two words: rich and strong!

Rich and strong, rich and strong, only after getting rich can you become stronger!

Krypton gold is always the last word.

However, after all, the reform of the Real School is only 20 years old, and there are still sequelae after krypton gold krypton is too much. For example, everyone feels that they need krypton gold to be stronger.

With so many important things to do, the cost is naturally huge, otherwise the chaos in the Northwest would not have been forced before.Now that Gao Yushi is in charge of finance, although he has established a large household department, and the financial strength of the household department has been further strengthened, he has just approved some projects to increase the budget.

What's more, in addition to these big projects, the work of "National Disaster Relief and Relief", which was highly pragmatic before, is also actively advancing, but now the disasters in Daming are also increasing year by year, and the financial budget has to be increased accordingly.Even for this reason, an extra sum of money has to be prepared for disaster relief work in possible major natural disasters.

But there is still a big problem with the 45 taels of silver that the Ministry of War needs to spend now, that is, it is not a one-time payment as a reward, but a regular increase in military pay.In other words, after the approval this year, the additional 45 taels will be spent every year in the future.

This is a bit ruthless, and Gao Yushi has to hesitate.

However, Gao Pragmatically agrees with the reason given by the Ministry of War. He knows the situation of the frontier army better than most of the courtiers. He even led the frontier army to fight a few times. The treatment of the nine frontier army is true. Too bad, many military households are struggling to support their families.

Especially before the Northwest Rebellion was quelled, he felt that the root cause of the rebellion was that the military households in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region were too poor, and a slight delay in the payment of military salaries would be able to create a turbulent wave under the control of caring people.From this perspective, it is indeed necessary to improve the treatment of frontier soldiers.

The Ministry of War only cares about the affairs of the Ministry of War, they don't care how to get money, they only care about asking for money, so the solution of the matter has to be pragmatic.

Gao Wushi pondered for a long while. Although he didn't say no, Liang Menglong and the three servants became more and more nervous.Gao Situ usually makes decisions very quickly, and he has not spoken for so long, presumably because the difficulty is really great, it seems... It is probably not going to happen.

However, just when Liang Menglong was about to give up, Gao Wushi suddenly spoke up.

He finally sighed, and said: "The money is really not available for the time being, I think I can only think of other ways... Do you think it is feasible to directly distribute the rations?"

Liang Menglong was taken aback, and replied: "Of course it is possible to distribute grain, but where does the grain come from? Since the implementation of the one whip method, the grain collected by the imperial court has become less and less, and the reserves of granaries in various places need to be purchased by the people with silver. Where does food come from?"

Gao Wushi shook his head lightly, and said, "I'll think about the food issue, but it will take a few days before I can give you a confirmation letter, please forgive me."
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(End of this chapter)