My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 515: Targeted
Liu Rong has been thinking about a question.

How can we ensure that local county governments, as well as the official system that makes up the local government governments, can maintain a high level of work efficiency on a regular basis?
The first conclusion Liu Rong came to was that when problems arose in the official system, the feudal emperor, as the person in power, should first find out the origin of the problem and prescribe the right remedy, rather than rushing to solve the problem regardless of where the problem came from.

If the cause of the disease is unknown, the treatment will inevitably be only a temporary solution and not a cure for the disease.

It's like in a certain place, there's a sudden wave of drowning babies.

The first reaction of ordinary people would be to immediately issue a ban and strictly prohibit this evil trend!

But the fact is: the bigger the wind and waves, the more expensive the fish.

A simple legal ban will only increase the difficulty and cost of implementing something, but will not prevent it from happening in the first place.

Therefore, the correct approach is to first find out where this evil trend comes from.

What parent doesn’t love their child?
What is the reason that makes parents willing to endure the grief and give up the little life they have nurtured for nine months, just to obey and follow this evil trend?
Are objective conditions preventing people from raising children?

Or are some superstitious ideas affecting people's judgment?
Find out the source and then respond to it accordingly - if individuals cannot afford to raise the child, the government should help; if it is caused by superstitious ideas, then guide them to adopt correct ideas.

Once the root cause is resolved, it may not matter whether the law prohibiting infanticide is enacted or not.

On the contrary - without any consideration, regardless of the cause and effect, just issue a decree on impulse?
It only makes the common people change from being open and aboveboard to being sneaky, it won't change anything at all.

Moreover, as time goes by, the sneaky behavior caused by the law will inevitably gradually become open and unscrupulous.

——Because the root of the problem is still there and has not been solved.

If the water is polluted at the source, no matter how much disinfectant or bleach you sprinkle into it, the water will never become clear.

Only customized treatment targeting the source of the disease can completely cure the disease.

Now in the Han Dynasty, from the central government in Chang'an to the local counties and prefectures, the problems of the official system are numerous.

The most serious and eye-catching of these is the problem of corruption.

As everyone knows, during the Liu Han dynasty, corruption was rampant from the top of the court to the bottom and from the inside of the palace to the outside.

As for the reason, people only thought that it was because Emperor Taizong Xiaowen, Liu Heng, did not punish his close minister Zhang Wu when he was reported for taking bribes. Instead, he gave him 500 gold coins, under the pretext of making him feel ashamed.

As a result, people in the world followed suit and made huge profits without any scruples, not fearing that their crimes would be exposed.

——At worst, I can ask Emperor Taizong to give me 500 gold~
——I promise, I will feel very 'guilty'~
However, the real situation is by no means so simple, nor so dramatic.

Just think about it: it’s just that a corrupt official has not been punished - especially he is the emperor’s absolute confidant!

Let alone "giving money to make someone feel guilty", even if the target person is attacked from both sides when out eating wild food, making it impossible for him to take care of himself, it is not a surprising thing.

and then?
The emperor himself is communicating with his most trusted confidant. Do you really dare to consider yourself as one of his most trusted confidants?
Therefore, in fact, the bribery prevailing in the Han Dynasty today has little to do with the fact that Emperor Taizong gave Zhang Wu "gold to ashamed his conscience" back then.

In other words, the decision, at most, only served as a catalyst, amplifying the existing bribery trend and moving it from the dark to the light.

As for the reason for this situation, it is also very simple.

Just like students copying homework because they cannot finish it by themselves: the bribery culture in the Han Dynasty originated from the fact that officials’ salaries were not enough to spend, and they could not support their wives and children without corruption.

Of course, Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty, was not Zhu Baopi of the Ming Dynasty in later generations.

At the beginning, the salaries set by Liu Bang for officials were actually sufficient, even very generous and generous.

Moreover, the Han Dynasty is still implementing the official salary system set by Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang himself.

The system has not changed. Why is it that officials who originally had enough salaries to spend, and even had some left over, have fallen to the point where they "have to be greedy" and cannot survive if they don't, in just a few decades?
To understand this clearly, we must first understand the way in which the Han Dynasty now distributes salaries to officials.

The Taizu Gao Emperor decreed that the salaries of officials, from the prime minister with a salary of ten thousand stones to the minor clerks without a rank, should be half of each from money and grain.

In other words, no matter how high or low the official rank is, as long as he is an official, his salary should be divided into salary and salary, half of which should be paid in food and the other half in cash of equivalent value.

This is where the problem lies.

——During the reign of Emperor Gao, the price of grain in Guanzhong reached as high as 8,000 coins per stone!
Even though this was the peak price, the price of grain under normal circumstances generally remained above 1,000 coins per stone.

Based on this grain price, take the Prime Minister as an example.

As the head of all officials, who was treated with courtesy and avoided by other ministers, the prime minister received a salary of 10,000 dan, but his actual salary was only 4,000 dan.

According to Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang's salary distribution rule of "half in cash and half in grain", the prime minister's annual salary should be 2,000 dan of grain, plus money to buy back 2,000 dan of grain from the market.

Using the grain price during the reign of Emperor Gaozu - if eight thousand coins were used as the standard, these two thousand dan of grain would be worth 1600 million coins at a discount.

That is, during the reign of Emperor Gao, the prime minister's annual salary was 1600 dan of grain, plus million coins.

1600 million coins, plus 1600 dan of grain also worth 3200 million coins - the prime minister's annual income has reached a huge amount of million coins.

Moreover, under the Han Dynasty's unspoken political rule of "only a marquis can be a prime minister", the prime minister must be a marquis.

Since he is the Marquis of Che, it is impossible for him to be interested in such a small amount of money as the Prime Minister.

——The total salary of the Manchus was only 4,000 dan, which was a drop in the bucket compared to the fiefs of Prime Minister Xiao and Prime Minister Cao, which were tens of thousands of households and the rent and taxes of their fiefdoms of more than 100,000 dan of grain every year.

The salary was as high as 3200 million coins, but the prime minister still looked down on it;
The state of Chehou has an annual output of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of money, so the prime minister naturally has no motivation to be greedy.

Why bother?
Instead of getting into trouble and being greedy for a few small things, it is better to spend more time on the fiefdom and get more families to pay rent and taxes to you, then you can earn back the small things anyway.

Perhaps someone would say: In the Han Dynasty, "only a marquis can have a prime minister", and the prime ministers were all marquises, who did not rely on salaries at all to make a living, and their livelihood was completely covered by the rent and taxes produced by the marquis' fiefdom.

so nice.

Let’s look at the Nine Ministers, who are also important officials in the court but may not necessarily hold the title of Marquis.

Among the Nine Ministers of the Han Dynasty, the official salary of two thousand dan was actually 2160 dan per year.

Half money and half grain, that is 1080 grains, plus 864 million money (the price of grain is money per stone).

Even during the reign of Emperor Gao, the grain price was stable for a long time: 1,000 coins per stone;

The annual income of one of the nine ministers of the current dynasty at the level of two thousand stones is as high as 108 million coins, plus grain of equal value.

More than two million yuan is also very good.

Even the lowest-ranking official, a 100,000-stone official, had an annual salary worth a full 100,000 coins, which was equivalent to the entire fortune of a middle-class family. With such a generous salary, naturally not many officials were willing to give up their reputation and engage in corruption for the sake of a few small sums.

It can be said that during the reign of Emperor Gao, the Han Dynasty was poor from top to bottom and from the inside out, whether it was the government, the officials, or the common people.

Only those who hold official positions and those who are granted fiefdoms are not poor.

——The nine ministers in the court earn several million coins, and the small officials with a salary of 100,000 coins have a high salary of 100,000 coins. It is very difficult to be poor.

In contrast, now Emperor Liu Rong is in the court.

The same "Prime Minister's salary is 2160 dan, and his actual salary is dan", and the two thousand dan among the Nine Ministers, whose actual salary is dan, have already undergone earth-shaking changes in their annual income.

Take the prime minister for example: it is still the two thousand shi of grain, plus the money worth two thousand shi of grain.

However, the price of grain has plummeted from 1,000 coins or even 8,000 coins per dan during the reign of Emperor Gaozu to the price quoted by the Grain Bureau of the Chief Duke and Commander in Chief at the beginning of this spring: 35 coins per dan of millet and 52 coins per dan of wheat.

Officials' salaries have always been calculated in terms of millet.

In other words, nowadays, the salary of the prime minister of the Han Dynasty has reached 70,000 coins, plus grain worth 70,000 coins - a total of 140,000 coins.

One hundred and fourteen thousand coins!

Prime Minister!

The salary of the Nine Ministers with a salary of 2,000 dan would be halved, which means they would only have more than 70,000 coins per year, less than 80,000 coins!
At the 3500-stone level, the annual income is only coins...

3500 thousand, what can you do in the Han Dynasty today?
——The most common coarse rag costs 11 cents per foot!
During the feudal festivals, if you wanted to buy a few pieces of cloth for your wife, children, and old mother to buy each of them a new set of clothes, you would have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars.
This is the most common and cheapest coarse rag!

After all, he is an official with a salary of 100 stones, not an unranked clerk. He can't really let his wife, children and the elderly wear nothing more than coarse linen, can he?
If you wear something a little bit fancy, your entire year's income will be spent on it!

For example, during festivals, people would eat meat from time to time.

I went to the market and asked: a chicken costs 180 cents, and it can't be a laying hen, it has to be an old hen that no longer lays eggs.

A decent meat meal for a family would cost several hundred dollars.

An official at the Baishi level could only afford to feed his family with meat for a dozen meals a year!

Even without counting other daily necessities - just counting the food rations, they eat porridge for every meal!
One hundred dan of grain is only the food ration for four adult men for one year.

An official himself, his wife, and his children, if the number exceeds five or six, his annual salary cannot even support the most basic food rations!

How can one not be greedy with such a low salary?

If you are not greedy, you will starve to death or die of poverty. How can you not be greedy?

Even the prime minister, who was the most courteous to his officials, only had an annual income of a few hundred thousand coins.

What is the concept of one hundred thousand dollars?
——According to Emperor Taizong Xiaowen, one hundred thousand coins was the entire property of a middle-class family.

For farmers, 100,000 yuan could buy three to five mu of land near Chang'an, and provide a legacy for their descendants.
Alternatively, you could buy a dozen or twenty acres of land in a remote area of ​​Guanzhong so that one of your sons would have a foundation for himself.

But for the prime minister, is one hundred thousand coins really a lot?

The second generation of meritorious officials just want to say: One hundred thousand coins are only ten gold coins. Not to mention buying a good horse, you can't even buy a decent female slave from a foreign race!
Over the past few years, "officials do not rely on salaries to make a living" has long been a consensus inside and outside the court.

——Those who had fiefdoms of marquisate relied on the rent and taxes produced by the fiefdoms.

Even if there are only a thousand households in the fiefdom, the rent and tax income can be tens of thousands of shi of grain every year.

The prime minister’s actual salary is 4,000 dan of grain, and the rent and tax of the fiefdom of 10,000 dan of grain is 2.5 times the prime minister’s salary!
As for the prime minister, in most cases, he would be granted a fief of 3,000 to 5,000 households, and the rent and taxes of the fiefdom would often be more than ten times his salary.
As the prime minister, who would care about the two thousand shi of millet and one hundred thousand copper coins?

After understanding all these things, it is not difficult to understand why corruption and bribery were rampant in the Han Dynasty.

——There is only one prime minister in the Han Dynasty.

Even after Liu Rong reformed the official system of dukes and ministers, the Han Dynasty still had only two people, the prime minister and the grand marshal, with a salary of 10,000 dan and an actual salary of 4,000 dan.

So, what about those who are not prime ministers or grand marshals?
Especially those "small officials of 3500 stones" who make up the majority and only receive a salary of coins a year, what should they do?
You can only be greedy.

They can only do whatever it takes, using all means possible, to barely make a living.

After all, you can't expect an official at the Baishi level to own hundreds of households in the fiefdom to provide himself with a steady stream of rent and taxes from the fiefdom.

It is no exaggeration to say that the situation faced by the Han Dynasty today is exactly the same as the situation during the Hongwu period of the Sun and Moon Dynasty thousands of years later.

——Unless you are wealthy, once you become an official, you will be corrupt!

——You have to be greedy even if it means peeling the skin and stuffing the grass!

——You can’t survive without greed!

Similar examples have been common in the past few years.

First, there was Zhang Shizhi, the Chief Justice during the reign of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen. In his early years, he was not given important positions because of his merchant background. He worked as a palace official in the Secretariat for more than ten years, responsible for organizing documents, wasting his time.

Before being recommended by Yuan Ang and being valued by Emperor Taizong, Zhang Shizhi had already begun to think about resigning and returning home.

As for the reason, Zhang Shizhi gave the following reason: long term official career reduces the family income.

——I have been an official for a long time, and my brother’s property has shrunk because of my position as an official in Chang’an.

At that time, Zhang Shizhi was a palace official of the rank of 600 stones.

According to the grain prices at that time, Zhang Shizhi's annual income was at least 40,000 coins.

However, Zhang Shizhi's elder brother is a wealthy businessman with a net worth of hundreds of millions.

However, such a big businessman saw his assets shrank drastically in just ten years because he supported his younger brother Zhang Shizhi to be an official in Chang'an.

The annual income of 40,000 coins not only failed to allow Zhang Shizhi to save any money, but also almost squandered his brother's fortune.

If Zhang Shizhi had not been recommended by Yuan Ang and had not been supported by Emperor Taizong, and eventually became the Minister of Justice and one of the Nine Ministers of the Han Dynasty, I am afraid that his family would have been in a state of poverty because of one person becoming an official.

(End of this chapter)