Daming 1805

Chapter 465 Capital Mergers
Zhu Jingyuan arranged work for Lin Zexu and Zheng Xingyang, asking them to further investigate the local situation in Suzhou.

Then Zhu Jingyuan sat at the desk by himself and began to think about a problem again.

If the marriage between Suzhou Liu Yudong and Songjiang Wang Baoqing is really not illegal at all, the dowry and dowry worth tens of thousands of gold bills offered by the two families are really just the foundation for the couple's future life.

So how should you look at this matter?
Maybe some do evade taxes through dowry and dowry, but there will definitely be large dowry and dowry.

Marriage between rich and noble families, and the combination of private capital are all completely logical things.

Even if there is no external interference at all, things will happen naturally.

The second industrial revolution was originally the era of monopoly capitalism.

What's more, in recent years, the Ming court began to vigorously promote the construction of government-run manufacturers.

Private capital feels the dual pressure of the royal family and the court, and it will definitely speed up the speed of their alliance.

In a completely free market, private capital may continue to merge and move towards the form of monopoly capitalism.

Just like land acquisition in the agricultural era, it cannot be completely avoided.

The process of capital becoming a monopoly can be regarded as a process of "capital merger" in a certain sense.

The excessive land merger is the most important reason for the collapse of the traditional dynasty.

On the one hand, it reduces the fault tolerance rate of the dynastic governance scheme.

There are fewer and fewer self-sufficient farmers, and the vast majority of farmers have become tenant farmers. The ability of tenant farmers to resist natural and man-made disasters is obviously lower than that of owner farmers.

If there is a slight deviation in the imperial court's policy, it may force the tenant farmers who are on the poverty line to rebel.

On the one hand, it reduced the dominance of the dynastic rulers.

There are more and more big landlords in the locality, and the big landlords are often also from a scholarly family. Members of such families are often the source of fresh blood for the traditional dynasty bureaucracy.

Whenever the imperial court puts forward any policies that harm the interests of their own families, the bureaucrats will instinctively find ways to delay or even resist.

Under such internal and external erosion, once a large-scale natural disaster breaks out, the imperial court has no strength to rescue, and the tenant farmers are also pushed to the edge of life and death crisis.

So the peasant uprising war broke out in the last years of the dynasty.

The result of capital mergers in the industrial era is actually very similar to the impact of land mergers in the agricultural era.

It also reduces the error tolerance rate of court policy.

An industry is monopolized by one or a few large companies, and small and medium-sized enterprises may even disappear completely, and all people become workers who are essentially proletarians.

Workers have no means of production, no valuable assets, and may even be completely negative assets. Of course, the ability to resist risks will be very low.

At the same time, capital mergers will also reduce the ruling ability of the imperial court.

The small "court" certainly can't control monopoly capital. Monopoly capital's favorite court is the "night watchman". It is enough to hope that the court can be a pure "security guard".

The problems in these two aspects continued to aggravate, and when large-scale natural disasters and man-made disasters encountered again, the workers would be pushed to the brink of death, and they would have no choice but to rebel and overthrow this useless court.

However, after the industrial age, social productivity has been greatly improved compared with the agricultural era.

The whole society's ability to resist natural disasters and man-made disasters has also increased significantly.

Even when it comes to a large-scale economic crisis, the materials owned by the whole society are actually very abundant.

After all, the intuitive response to the economic crisis is "overproduction", but the lack of liquidity, not the lack of materials.

As long as the bourgeoisie unites and distributes a certain amount of relief to the unemployed workers through the imperial government agencies they control, so that the unemployed workers will not starve to death, the entire country and the imperial court will not completely collapse.

The United States in the Great Depression is a very typical representative of a bourgeoisie who completely controls the court.

Although there was massive unemployment in the United States at that time, the U.S. government had sufficient resources for relief.

In addition, the New World is already rich in products, and it is basically impossible to directly starve to death.

So even in the United States during the Great Depression, there was no proletarian revolution.

But the premise of all this is that the products are rich, and the bourgeoisie replaced the traditional aristocracy and truly controlled the state machine.

After the United States became independent, there was no traditional aristocracy, and the entire country was a bourgeois regime from the very beginning.

But the countries of Thailand and the West are completely different, and the traditional aristocracy has existed in the society for a long time.

The bourgeoisie in the countries of Thailand and the West, basically in the era of the second industrial revolution, gradually seized the control of the traditional aristocrats over the imperial court while their own power was rapidly expanding.

Specifically for Britain, this process started at the end of the nineteenth century and was not fully completed until the end of World War II.

World War I was a turning point in the exchange of power between the two sides.

Before World War I, the power of kings and nobles was still greater than that of capital.

After World War I, it was reversed.

Since 1894, under the impetus of the British House of Commons, the proportion of inheritance tax has continued to rise.

From 60.00% all the way up to [-]% during World War II Five!
Traditional nobles are usually not good at management and mainly rely on land and manors for income.

These lands and estates are again the most important heritage.

If an old nobleman has [-] mu of land, when he passes it on to his son, he has to pay inheritance tax on the value of [-] mu of land.

The bourgeoisie does not allow traditional aristocrats to sit on land and manors to live and dream.

Coupled with the simultaneous increase in property taxes, the British bourgeoisie has continued to extract money from the traditional aristocracy for half a century, and eventually killed most of the aristocrats.

In the end, the British royal family began to marry civilians, because the aristocracy completely lost their power.

The current situation in Ming Dynasty is that the royal family and nobles still control the country.

Including the royal family, most of the aristocrats are also bourgeois, and the pure bourgeoisie is very weak.

At the same time, Daming did not collect inheritance tax at all.

Because this not only completely deviates from the traditional culture of the East, but also completely unacceptable to the nobles who still hold the ruling power.

Daming not only does not collect inheritance tax, but also does not collect income tax at all for the gift of property between parents and children.

Only when it involves the change of ownership of fixed assets and the renaming of bond assets such as securities and equity, it is necessary to pay a small amount of stamp duty and deed tax when going through the formalities.

Before the second industrial revolution, before the rapid expansion of merchant capital, the impact of these systems was actually not that great.

But now things have started to change.

Zhu Jingyuan feels that the policy of no inheritance tax and tax-free property gifts between immediate family members is an increasingly large tax loophole in the era of rapid expansion of capital power.

However, anyone who wants to tax these two situations is absolutely doing the wrong thing.

Do I have to pay taxes when I inherit the family business from my ancestors?Is there any reason!
When parents give money to their children for expenses, or buy a house for their children for marriage, do they have to pay taxes?
Do children have to pay taxes when they honor gifts to their parents, or give money to spend, or buy facilities for the elderly?
Traditional Ming people simply cannot imagine and accept this situation.

The royal family and noble children directly affected are definitely unacceptable.

Many people may take it for granted, should the emperor pay taxes when he succeeds?
When the Supreme Emperor transferred the ownership of the royal consortium and Huangzhuang to the next emperor, did he also have to pay taxes to the court?
Zhu Jingyuan kept thinking in his heart, what should we do about this matter?When should it be done?

In the next few days, the secretaries sent by Zhu Jingyuan to other regions also returned one after another.

Report after report was delivered to Zhu Jingyuan.

Zhu Jingyuan also listened to and read these reports carefully with his own thinking.

Local clan organizations in Jianghuai Province are very common.

Most families that have lived in a certain place for a long time will form a clan organization maintained by blood ties.

In a clan, it is very common for someone to do business, someone to test for fame, and someone to go to sea at the same time.

At the same time, it is very common for some people to be officials in other places, and it is very common for their children to be grassroots officials in the local yamen.

However, what Zhu Jingyuan was most worried about was the fact that a clan completely controlled a place, but he basically didn't see it.

In most places, a family has people in all aspects, and it is far from the situation where a family controls a town or county.

What's more, in many places, there are some clans who are not very good at dealing with each other, and there are conflicts in business or industry.

This morning, Zhu Jingyuan summoned Lin Zexu and the main secretary, and expressed some of his doubts:
"According to the information obtained from your investigations, the prefectures and counties under the Jianghuai Province of the Ming Dynasty basically have no large-scale exclusive clan forces that overwhelm the sky with one hand.

"Of course this can be regarded as a good thing, which shows that the place is relatively stable, and there are fewer things like local tyrants and bullies.

"But I wonder why? Why is this happening."

Zhu Jingyuan didn't question someone, but put on a discussion posture as usual.

Discussions started immediately at the scene.

Soon after, Lin Zexu himself tried to analyze it and said:
"Your Highness, the students think that there are basically no local bully-style clan forces in the Jianghuai area, probably because most of the Jianghuai province is too rich."

Zhu Jingyuan was slightly taken aback:
"Because you're too rich?"

Lin Zexu nodded and continued to explain his thoughts:
"Taking our Fujian Lin family as an example, our family allocated a sum of money to support the schooling of the family's children.

"At the same time, it provides young people with potential to go to college or even take part-time exams.

“Our family has also invested in related industries such as shipbuilding, aircraft, automobiles, tractors and supporting engines.

"We also spent some extra money to invest in the development of farms and rayon textile factories in Dongmozhou, a big food country.

"Thanks to His Highness, our Lin family has really made a lot of money in the new industry promoted by His Highness over the years.

"But our family is not special at all in the current Daming.

"Including the Jianghuai region, plus Shandong in the north, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong in the south, there are many such families that operate in various fields and industries.

"That is to say, everyone's family has people who have seen the world, and they know how to go to court if they suffer a loss.

"Those who refuse to accept the punishment may even take the lawsuit all the way to Dali Temple in the capital.

"Everyone follows the rules, so there is no direct personal threat, and there is no way to wipe out the enemy, and there is no way to cover the sky with one hand.

"If someone doesn't obey the rules, everyone has a way to expose it, and the court will naturally punish the crime according to law.

"Most families are unable to overwhelm all fellow villagers, and there are complex relationships of competition and cooperation everywhere.

"On the contrary, it is a relatively remote place, and there is a situation where it is suspected that a certain local family is covering the sky with one hand."

After hearing this, Zhu Jingyuan couldn't help but nodded with a smile.

Although Lin Zexu was very modest in his mouth, families like the Lin family in Fujian are definitely not everywhere.

But just like what he said, there are indeed a lot of families in the southeast of the mainland of Ming Dynasty who are involved in various industries and keep up with the latest technological development.

However, if the scale of the family itself is larger, the scale of the industry it operates will of course be larger, and if the scale of the family is small, the scale of the industry it operates will be smaller.

Betting in multiple places is originally the customary practice of traditional clans in China.

The most important thing is that with the continuation of this multi-party operation and continuous learning and exploration, these families have shifted from traditional local clans to industrial and commercial asset families.

Especially Lin Zexu's words, everyone has seen the big world, and they will not back down when they are intimidated or threatened.

Everyone is not afraid to take the lawsuit to Dali Temple.

In particular, Jianghuai Province was originally Nanzhili, and the current provincial capital is also nominally Ming Dynasty Nanjing.

I don't know what stage fright is

Of course, the most critical issue is that the Ming court is strong enough to provide a relatively fair and strict competition platform.

If anyone doesn't follow the rules and wants to rely on violence and black means to attack other families, the other party can directly ask the court to rectify it if they find something to do. That is a truly devastating blow.

In other words, under the guidance and management of the imperial court, the most affluent places in Ming Dynasty have formed a relatively stable and reasonable industrial and commercial competition logic after more than 100 years of development.

On the contrary, in relatively remote places, where the news is not smooth and the education is relatively backward, there will be black and evil local snakes.

But the problem still exists.

Although there are many advanced parts in the rules established by Emperor Shizu, there are also more compromises.

Laws enacted in the pre-industrial age, of course, have to adapt to the status quo of the pre-industrial age.

Now is the second industrial revolution, the era when large-scale machine production is truly formed, and the era when capital mergers have turned into monopoly.

Before the rules have been perfected, clever businessmen are already frantically taking advantage of loopholes.

So Zhu Jingyuan nodded with a smile and said:
"Mr. Lin is right. The richer the region, the more orderly it is, and the stronger the imperial court, the less likely it is to have local evil forces.

"I am very pleased with this, and then I will adjust the scope of the investigation and rectification of the Black and Evil family forces, with relatively remote and impoverished mountainous areas as the main targets.

"But at the same time, in relatively wealthy areas, it is very common for local clans to jointly run against competitors and use various means to evade taxes.

"I read your reports, and found similar situations in almost all places, especially the most affluent Suzhou Prefecture.

"We will start our investigation with the 'marriage between Liu Yudong and Wang Baoqing' as the starting point.

"Find out the dowry gift of the ten thousand gold bills, how the cash was raised, and whose account will it end up in."

(End of this chapter)