I traveled with them to the Northern Song Dynasty

Chapter 129: Making Money and Cutting Taxes

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Yuan Qingcheng is born with a beautiful face. She has the gentleness and reserve of a classical beauty, as well as the independence and self-confidence of a modern woman. She has a slender and graceful figure and should be a standard celestial beauty, but she often wears coarse linen clothes and wears pigtails. Her overall style becomes natural and simple, giving people the impression of a "pastoral fairy" who is detached from the world. Her appearance blends perfectly with pastoral life without any sense of incongruity.

Despite being in the busy palace, Yuan Qingcheng was able to build a quiet, peaceful and self-sufficient pastoral world, working from sunrise to sunset. This made Zhao Ya, who was living in the fast-paced life of an emperor, yearn for it and satisfied his longing for poetry and distant places.

To be honest, sometimes Zhao Ya really wanted to go with Yuan Qingcheng for a few days to live the same pastoral life as her, especially when the court affairs were cumbersome and people were restless. Zhao Ya fantasized that he could temporarily cast off the constraints of the dragon robe, change into coarse cloth clothes, walk on the path in the field, with soft soil under his feet, lush crops on both sides, the fragrance of rice and wild flowers lingering at the tip of his nose, the crisp birdsong and the gurgling sound of the stream in the distance in his ears, so that his soul could truly rest and be purified.

However, reality is always more cruel than dreams.

As an emperor, Zhao Ya was very clear about his mission, and he was even more aware that if he did not work hard, he might be captured by the Jin people and sent to study in the northeast, where he would live a life worse than death.

Therefore, Zhao Ya could only think about living a rural life with Yuan Qingcheng.

Besides, being an emperor not only brings unavoidable responsibilities, but also abundant rewards.

Putting aside other things, when it comes to women, although Zhao Ya had only been a prince for half a year and an emperor for more than half a year, he had not yet achieved the achievement of "killing a hundred people", but he had already completed most of it.

This is a height that most poor men will never reach in their lifetime.

Moreover, Zhao Ya dared to guarantee that all the products he handled were original.

This was a dream that was out of reach for most men in their previous lives.

What's more, among the women that Zhao Ya succeeded in getting, there was the queen, the most talented woman in history, and four time travelers.

If he wasn't the emperor, how could Zhao Ya have touched them?
But then again, precisely because he got so much, Zhao Ya sometimes had to make some compromises.

Everyone thought that Zhao Ya was bewitched by the "Sea and Sky Feast" created by Cai Xuan, which consisted of more than 30 beauties, and that was why he stayed at her place for many days.

Ok.

Everyone guessed right.

Which normal man can refuse the joy of "Hai Tian Sheng Yan"?

But then again, the reason why Zhao Ya favored Cai Xuan for many days until she became pregnant was actually due to political considerations.

This political consideration was undoubtedly Cai Xuan’s father, Cai Jing.

As we all know, before Zhao Ya ascended the throne, he designed many reform plans. After ascending the throne, he faced many difficulties, such as controlling the Yellow River, building the Yanfu Palace, creating the Shenji Left Army and the Shenji Right Army, launching a war to destroy Qingtang Tubo, rotating the army, establishing a patrol system to solve the problem of redundant troops, and the annual agricultural research fee of one million guan given to Yuan Qingcheng this time.

To implement these, it is undoubtedly necessary to have strong financial support. Without money, no matter what political ideals Zhao Ya has, he can do nothing.

But at the end of Zhao Xu's reign, the Zhao Song court was almost poor enough to urinate blood.

Even when Zhao Ya first ascended the throne, the finances of the Zhao Song court were stretched to the limit.

Why was it that after only half a year, the Zhao Song court and Zhao Ya were able to maintain such huge expenses?

This is mainly because of Cai Jing.

After Zhao Ya delegated power to Cai Jing, Cai Jing immediately began to take action against various banned projects.

After Cai Jing's tea law reform.

This year's tea profits have increased directly to two million guan, and this is only the first year.

Ye Shiyun calculated for Zhao Ya that within three years, the profit would reach four million strings of cash per year.

This is already five times the income in the late reign of Emperor Renzong of Song.

After the tea method comes the wine method.

During the reign of Zhao Xu, one-third of the profits from the national liquor monopoly were collected and handed over to the court.

During the reign of Emperor Zhaozong, after Cai Jing's reforms, the tax revenue was increased by another one-third.

From then on, the bulk of the wine tax was taken by the imperial court.

Compared with the monopoly on tea and liquor, the income from the monopoly on salt has always been much higher than the former two.

Previously, the imperial court had always given most of the salt monopoly revenue to local governments, even after Wang Anshi's reforms. However, a problem arose during the reign of Zhao Xu.

The problem is that the salt ponds of Jieyan were damaged, which once affected the local fiscal revenue.

The people in Shaanxi and the capital area mostly rely on Jieyan for their daily salt consumption.

This problem was not solved until Zhao Ya ascended the throne.

To this end, Cai Jing transported sea salt from Hebei and Jingdong to the capital area for sale.

Unexpectedly, this move only earned a profit of more than 1.5 million guan with a cost of more than 147,000 guan.

Cai Jing therefore completely opened up his mind. He simply stopped the salt monopoly in the major salt-producing areas of Hebei, Jingdong, and Jianghuai, and instead required merchants to come to Bianliang City to purchase salt notes and salt permits before they could sell salt.

In this way, Ye Shiyun calculated for Zhao Ya that the salt banknote income this year alone could reach more than 12 million strings of cash, and within three years it could reach 25 million strings of cash per year.

In the past, the money earned by Emperor Shenzong of Song from selling salt notes was only over 3 million strings of cash.

Zhao Ya's income from selling salt notes increased by more than eight times during this period.

But Cai Jing was still not satisfied. He also offered advice to Zhao Ya, wanting to change Jiaozi to Qianyin and use his method, so that the court's income could be greatly increased.

After Ye Shiyun learned about this, she directly expressed her disagreement with Cai Jing's money law reform because it would cause too much harm.

The key point is that, in Ye Shiyun's view, there is no need to use nuclear-powered money printing now - this is an economic policy that can only be initiated when the economy has deteriorated to a certain extent, or there is a major war, and huge funds are needed to support it.

Old Party officials also repeatedly submitted memorials to Zhao Ya, saying that a stable currency is the cornerstone of economic prosperity and a guarantee of public stability.

Even if Zhao Ya didn't understand economics, he knew that the stability of the currency was related to the country's foundation and must be treated with caution.

Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, Zhao Ya let Zhao Tingzhi be responsible for the currency reform. Moreover, Zhao Ya personally controlled it (actually, he asked Ye Shiyun to help Zhao Ya control it), and Zhao Ya let Zhao Kai and Zhang Que, two talents who were also good at issuing currency, be responsible for the specific implementation. Coupled with Zhao Tingzhi's conservative ideas on currency reform, it is believed that there should be no major problems with the stability of currency during Zhao Ya's reign.

Although Zhao Ya did not expect any benefits from the currency reform, the fact is that the currency reform also brought a lot of income to the court.

In addition, the three money-making strategies that Ye Shiyun originally proposed, as well as the several economic strategies that were subsequently added, also brought considerable benefits to the court.

In addition, a large amount of income was obtained from anti-corruption and property raids.

It was Zhao Ya who was able to do so many things and still make a lot of money.

It is worth mentioning that Zhao Ya’s soap and glass are also making huge profits now.

Not long ago, Ye Shiyun gave Zhao Ya a way to raise money by issuing lottery tickets so that Zhao Ya could support his family.

This meant that not only was the imperial court of Zhao Ya rich, but Zhao Ya himself was also rich.

Unlike the historical figure Zhao Ji who started squandering money after becoming rich, Zhao Ya first issued an edict to reduce the land tax in the six routes of Shaanxi and Hebei for three years, and to reduce the land tax in other areas affected by disasters this year for one year. The land tax in the rest of the country was reduced by 20% to allow the people to recuperate.

Although not all of it, Zhao Ya did achieve some of the goal of taking from the people and using it for the people.

Seeing this, the old party that had originally opposed Cai Jing's radical economic reform measures immediately became much quieter when they saw that the court was collecting money from merchants and giving it back to the farmers. They were also much more relieved about Zhao Ya who chose to support Cai Jing's reforms.

Among the people, although most of the land was in the hands of high-ranking officials, gentry, and wealthy families due to land annexation, because the Zhao Song Dynasty was an agricultural society, farmers still accounted for the vast majority of the population, so land tax was still one of the main burdens on farmers.

Therefore, Zhao Ya's reduction of land tax can directly benefit the majority of farmers, reduce their economic pressure, bring them tangible benefits, and let them breathe a sigh of relief.

Moreover, the benefits of the land tax reduction cannot fall on the heads of high-ranking officials, nobles, and wealthy families - they did not have to pay land tax in the first place.

By the way, Zhao Ya specially issued an imperial decree that anyone who embezzled the tax relief given to farmers by the court would have his property confiscated and his family investigated, and would be exiled a thousand miles away, and there would be no leniency.

After the farmers learned about this preferential policy, they could not help but feel grateful to Zhao Ya and at the same time had great expectations of him, hoping that Zhao Ya could save them from their miserable lives.

Faced with such expectations, do you think Zhao Ya can live a pastoral life with Yuan Qingcheng?

So, Zhao Ya retracted his gaze from watching Yuan Qingcheng walk away and continued on his own path...

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(End of this chapter)