Reborn Ming Dynasty as Emperor

Chapter 397 Zhu Youxiao Wants to Be a Good Emperor
Galileo's admission to the Royal Academy of Sciences was nothing more than an inconspicuous incident in the 12th year of the Great Ming Dynasty.

In the not-too-distant future, perhaps more masters of science from the West and the East will come to Daming to make their own contributions to the development of Daming's science and technology.

Even not only the masters of science, the Peking University Hall will also recruit international students from other countries, and even for international students who study Chinese history and culture not only Confucianism, the imperial court will also give generous scholarships.

Simply relying on swords and guns is difficult to maximize the benefits of Da Ming in all aspects. After all, fists can only hit one person, but cultural output can gradually expand Da Ming's influence, and then achieve the assimilation effect brought by swords and guns.

The institutions and systems of ocean trade are basically fully established, and perhaps in the not-too-distant six months, Daming's treasury revenue will increase several times.

In addition, Ma Shiying has been transferred to be the governor of Huguang, Yuan Keli has become the governor of Henan, and Sun Chengzong has now gone to Liaodong. , the proportion of land tax tax will be even lower.

In order to unite the common people and gain their support, Zhu Youxiao, who offended almost all the gentry class, even lowered the tax again as early as the beginning of the year, and even clearly issued an imperial decree in the "Daming Daily", that is, a single household with less than one mu of land Those with five acres will no longer be subject to land tax, and all prefectures and counties will be ordered to make this news public to the people.

This purpose of benefiting the people is also known as "reduction of taxes in a prosperous age, five acres will not be expropriated", and it was officially recorded in Zhu Youxiao's memoirs, which became an important performance of Zhu Youxiao's flaunting that he is a generation of Mingjun.

Officials would not object to this kind of policy of benefiting the people, because it did not involve their interests, and they were happy to flatter His Majesty Zhu Youxiao.

The common people are naturally very grateful for this, especially in the late Ming society where land annexation was serious, there were quite a lot of landless people and poor peasants who only owned a small amount of land, although Zhu Youxiao exempted them from corvee and All kinds of extra money, but still bear taxes, and the pressure of life is still great.

Now Zhu Youxiao is directly exempted from taxation of less than five acres of land, which undoubtedly further reduces the burden on the bottom-level people who are struggling on the line of life and death.

You must know that not all areas are highly urbanized, and many landless people and poor farmers cannot completely live without the land like the people in the south of the Yangtze River.

In addition, in fact, this has little effect on Ming's treasury income, because for self-cultivated farmers who can bear the tax, the number of acres of land must not be less than five acres. After all, there is no hybrid rice now, and the family does not have more than ten acres of land. It is impossible to live.

Local officials are not opposed to this policy, because families with land holdings of less than five mu actually have nothing to squeeze out, and they will revolutionize when they are forced to die.

Therefore, it is obvious that once Zhu Youxiao's decree came out, Daming's so-called unscrupulous people would be less in the future.

Of course, Zhu Youxiao also specially drew a cake. On the 12th year of the apocalypse, he put forward his political blueprint in various official newspapers and periodicals, that is, this year, people with less land will no longer pay taxes. After that, if the ownership of a single farmland is less than a certain standard, no tax will be levied, and in the near future, the land tax will even be directly and permanently reduced.

But now that Zhu Youxiao has fulfilled his first promise, the common people can't help but look forward to His Majesty's follow-up promises will be fulfilled while being grateful to Dade, and some have even begun to imagine that if the land tax is really not collected in the future, then their own What a pleasant little day will be.

Zhu Youxiao's picture cake is not only to win the hearts of the poor peasants, but also to the middle-class self-cultivating farmers and lower-middle-class landlords, it also gives them a slight change in their attitude towards the imperial court and hope, because everyone knows that once the land tax is reduced , is also in their interest.

However, for the gentry class, the temptation of this pie is not great, because the biggest privilege after they have achieved fame is that they do not have to pay taxes, and because of this, a large number of self-cultivating farmers contributed, and they were able to get rich overnight and become parasites , but now His Majesty wants to turn the privileges of his own class into the rights of all the people of Ming Dynasty. Now they will not have privileges, and they will no longer be able to let others serve as their slaves.

This is tantamount to completely depriving the gentry all over the world of their privilege of not paying food in disguise.

But the civil servants representing the gentry class dare not point fingers at Zhu Youxiao's promise. First, they don't know how to object. His Majesty will exempt the people of the world from taxes in the future. There is no way to refute it; what's more, if the civil officials want to object to Zhu Youxiao's exemption of the farm tax for the whole world, they can only find a reason that the current treasury revenue is tight and they cannot live without the farm tax.

However, the treasury revenue is increasing year by year, especially with the opening of the sea trade this year, coupled with the further expansion of the mainland market, and the expansion of commercial taxes from Fengyang to Nanzhili, the civil servants have no reason to find the reason for the imperial court to be poor. .

Some cunning officials even began to advise Zhu Youxiao to travel eastward, to sacrifice to Mount Tai, and even to other five mountains.

Even with Zhu Youxiao's own mausoleum, the officials of the Ministry of Rites also volunteered to expand the scale.

There are also those who directly asked Zhu Youxiao to expand the royal garden and palace, and advised to make another southern tour on the grounds of appeasing the sea.

Zhu Youxiao knew what these civil servants meant, and it was clear that he wanted to spend more money as an emperor, that is, to expand the expenditure of the national treasury, to make himself poor, so that he could slap himself in the face, so that he would not be able to cash in in the future The promise of permanently exempting the world from the land tax.

At the same time, he also got a bad name for his success.

For these ministers who bewitched themselves to spend more money, Zhu Youxiao can readily agree to a few reasons. Go straight to jail.

Even sometimes it is not only Zhu Youxiao himself who advertises himself as a generation of Mingjun, he must be diligent and thrifty. The hard-headed officials of the Metropolitan Procuratorate and the Sixth Division are now playing a role, and they have really cheated their black-bellied colleagues. Anyone who wants to advise Zhu Youxiao to go to Mount Tai or expand the garden, as long as there is an official to impeach him, Zhu Youxiao will directly dismiss him according to the opinion of the official.

"Now that the national treasury is abundant, some of you have forgotten the fundamentals of being a courtier, flattering me, flattering me, I tell you the truth, I am not King Zhou of Shang, nor Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty! You should put away your flowery intestines as soon as possible, and be safe. Doing things for the court with peace of mind is serious!"

Zhu Youxiao reprimanded a group of civil officials in the court more than once, and the civil officials could only lament that His Majesty is too wise and frugal today, with the style of Yao and Shun.

(End of this chapter)