Datang Nongsheng

Chapter 291 The Plan to Spend Money

Sun Xiangfu didn't like to kowtow to others, and he wasn't used to others kowtowing to himself, so Village Chief He who ran over to kowtow to him was sent back with a bowl of mutton noodle soup.

Not only him, but everyone in Hejia Village was blessed. This mutton noodle soup and a lot of green vegetables boiled in the soup were the best food they had ever eaten in their life.

Eating and chatting with the emperor is something that village chief He and the villagers of Hejia village can brag about for a lifetime. It happened so suddenly today, without any precautions or omens. When Li Shimin finished his meal, he planned to go to At the next stop, all the villagers mobilized and sent his group to the side of the cement road. Even though the convoy had walked a long way on the cement road, they were still looking at each other from a distance.

"Your Majesty, I feel that this matter should be featured in the newspaper."

Fang Xuanling, who was also in Li Shimin's carriage, cupped his hands and suggested.

Hearing this, Sun Xiangfu secretly sighed in his heart, the ancient wise men were no worse than modern people at all!This shows the importance of publicity. It would be even better if a few reporters could be sent to Hejia Village to interview and report what the emperor did in Hejia Village in a spontaneous way.

Immediately, Sun Xiangfu was dumbfounded, because Ma Zhou had already thought of this, and even brought it up to Li Shimin, so Li Shimin brazenly agreed, so the happy printing workshop took another loss-making business, and Sun Xiangfu I can only sigh secretly, Weinan Industrial Zone should be built quickly!After it's built, I won't have to suffer this kind of loss.

Li Shimin, who continued on his way, was very talkative. He first mentioned to Xiao Yu and Fang Xuanling the matter of using farmers' children as officials. However, Sun Xiangfu refused because of insufficient conditions.

A real farmer who has not yet graduated, and now has an adult farmer, such as Sun Erli, who is currently serving as a pastor in the Department of Agriculture. Administrative officials.

"Your Majesty, there are still a few conditions that need to be met to enable the children of the peasant family to become officials. First of all, the reform of the official system. The children of the peasant family can only farm. If they are allowed to manage other civil affairs, I am afraid that it will be a mess. Therefore, the first prerequisite is, Set up a yamen, or an official post, specializing in agriculture.

The dissemination of agricultural technology is not only about having enough farm children. For example, Your Majesty has profound literary attainments. It is not difficult to understand "Qi Min Yao Shu", but ordinary scholars want to read all of them. I understand it, but it takes some effort, but if I interpret it in vernacular, then not only scholars, but also people who have not read books can understand the truth.

What does this mean?Our methods of recording and propagating culture and technology have fallen behind, and they are not simple enough or accurate enough.

Taking the Analects of Confucius as a metaphor, often a sentence, when interpreted, may have two or three meanings, and different sentences have different meanings. This is very inconsistent with our production and life needs and should be eliminated. "

"Eliminate the Analects of Confucius?" Sun Xiangfu said while Li Shimin and several ministers in the car nodded and listened, but at the end, they all said in surprise.

"It's not to eliminate the Analects of Confucius, but to eliminate the way of dissemination of knowledge like the Analects of Confucius. Why did the ancients like to record things in short words? In fact, the reason is very simple. It is not easy to make bamboo slips with pen and ink. Even in the past few years, pen, ink, paper and inkstone were expensive. Surprisingly, let alone the pre-Qin period.

However, until now, we are constantly solving this problem. Xingfu Village has been able to produce very cheap paper and a new ink-saving pen. In the future, no one will use bamboo slips to write.

In addition, the Chinese pinyin and punctuation marks edited and compiled by Yu Xueshi before are all things that can make the transmission of knowledge more accurate.

If we write or disseminate knowledge directly in the form of vernacular, then all knowledge and information will become easier and more accurate to disseminate.

Say something disrespectful, Your Majesty, how many people in the world understand your imperial decree?I'm afraid there isn't one out of hundreds of people. Even officials like Weichen can only hear the general idea. Is this really good? "

At this point in what Sun Xiangfu said, in the carriage, only the sound of the wheels turning could be heard. The problem he said was very realistic, but it was a problem that no one had considered before.

Why was the aristocratic family in this period able to monopolize literature?Because the ancients made this thing too advanced, it is hard to understand.

In later generations, a junior high school student can already master a huge amount of knowledge, but if you want them to fully understand a few ancient Chinese essays, it may be very difficult.

Chinese characters have multiple meanings and many homophones. Chinese has different tones and different meanings. It is one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world to learn. This is the understanding of Chinese characters and Chinese by foreigners in later generations. If they are allowed to learn Ancient traditional characters, classical Chinese, it is estimated that their heads will burst.

What is the fundamental purpose of reading?
Just sensible.

So, why not make the book easier to understand!

You can't talk too much, just stop at the point, it is impossible for the ancients to change their habits and cognition at once. Sun Xiangfu said these words, as long as they can arouse the reflection of Li Shimin and the two prime ministers in the court, even if It is not possible for the imperial court to disseminate knowledge in the vernacular and popularize it. The economy of the Tang Dynasty has not yet taken off, and the basic conditions are not met.

After being silent for a long time, Li Shimin took the lead in nodding in agreement with what Sun Xiangfu said. As for whether to reform or not, and how to reform, there is still a long way to go.

The carriage continued to move forward, and the chat continued. As an emperor, Li Shimin was the first one since ancient times to go to the countryside and visit the ordinary people in the windy and snowy days. Normalization, because Sun Xiangfu talked with him about Datang's economic expectations for the next few years. From next year, Datang, at least his royal family, will not be short of money.

"Your Majesty, according to my estimates, if the total tax revenue of the Tang Dynasty is converted into money next year, there will be at least 500 million to 800 million guan in surplus. If you drive a carriage to the village every day, even if you send it for a whole year, you may not be able to finish it." For a fraction, we need to make a plan. The imperial court can’t hoard wealth in large quantities.”

Sending a load of rice noodles to each household in a village with a population of dozens of people will cost only a few hundred guan at best, and even if some meat is added, it will not exceed [-] guan. Just send out [-] yuan, even if he does this kind of thing all year round, it is only a fraction of the total tax revenue estimated by Sun Xiangfu.

And the data that Sun Xiangfu said is data other than the data that Datang used to routinely spend. Why can he make such a prediction?It's very simple. He knows the tax situation of the major branches of Wangjiang Tower, the salted fish bean paste workshop in Yangzhou, and Shanyang. Using these big taxpayers and taking the tax revenue of this year's disaster year as a benchmark, he estimated a group of the most conservative taxpayers. number.

As for the harm of the imperial court hoarding a large amount of wealth, Li Shimin knew it at the beginning of Li Tang's founding. The national reserves of the Sui Dynasty were not insignificant. Big jump, but what will happen to such a rich Sui Dynasty?

Perish.

In ancient times when no credit currency was issued, there was a fixed amount of money. When there was more money in the treasury, the people had less money. This was the beginning of the disaster.

People who are poor want to change, how to change?Rebellion already.

Li Shimin has figured out some things, but there are still some things that he has not figured out. He looked at Sun Xiangfu and asked, "How to use money also needs to be planned?"

"Of course, didn't you say that the government work should be done first? How much does it cost money, but the most important aspect of government work, of course, must be well planned."

Ma Zhou agreed with Sun Xiangfu's words very much, and continued, "Your Majesty, you have always lamented that there is no manpower available. If the government's finances next year are really as Sun Dudu said, it seems that we can increase investment in education. "

I heard that money is available, but Li Shimin’s first thought was to expand the army and update military equipment. However, he also attached great importance to education. At the beginning of Li Tang’s founding of the country, he restored Guozijian, Taixue and other national universities. Local teaching is still being strengthened. In the Zhenguan Dynasty, county-level cities already had schools of a certain size. Now, they can advance to prefectures and counties.

However, this hole may be a bit big, because although the population of Datang is only 2000 to [-] million, there are hundreds of thousands of prefectures and counties. In rarer counties, there may only be hundreds of thousands of people, who are of the right age and want to study, and there may be only a few or a dozen people who want to read. The number of people must be thousands of people, which is not just as simple as spending a lot of money.

"Your Majesty, I suggest that the citizenship system should be implemented as soon as possible, and the teacher should be classified as a first-class citizen."

In Li Shimin's carriage, there was no one with a bad brain, Xiao Yu just thought about it for a while, and then made a suggestion.

Hearing this, Li Shimin looked at Sun Xiangfu. Unexpectedly, the citizenship system he created could affect all aspects. People who can read and write were originally scholars and enjoyed some privileges. The idea put forward, after being classified as a second-class citizen, although the privileges have not been reduced correspondingly, they are the same as ordinary people.

If they want to continue to maintain their privileges, they will definitely want to be first-class citizens, and as first-class citizens, apart from being an official, they can only teach. This will make many scholars who want social status choose this profession.

"Your Majesty, I feel that Xiao Xiang's suggestion is reasonable. Not only should we give them the status of first-class citizens, but also give them a high salary. In this way, knowledge can be popularized in our Tang Dynasty. When there are more people who can read and write, we Then you will be able to do more things, so even if half of next year's taxes are invested in education, it is worthwhile."

As the so-called century-old plan, education is the foundation, Sun Xiangfu, who came from later generations, has seen the success of the case, and he did not hesitate to speak out in support of it.

"So, what about the other half?"

After hearing affirmative advice from Sun Xiangfu, Li Shimin asked him again.

"Of course it's people's livelihood and infrastructure!" Sun Xiangfu replied without thinking.

The meaning of the word people's livelihood is actually very general. It can refer to production technology, medical technology, basic necessities of life, food, housing and transportation, etc., covering almost everything in a country.

With a good people's livelihood, the wealth growth rate and centripetal force of the whole country will be greatly improved. By then, the country's strength in all aspects will be raised to a new height, just like the military that Li Shimin is more concerned about, with enough money , enough sophisticated equipment, enough nutritious diet, are you afraid that you won't be able to train a strong army?
As for infrastructure construction, it is a guarantee for the development of people's livelihood. The prerequisite for becoming a developed country is complete infrastructure construction. Of course, what is the standard for this completeness is different in Sun Xiangfu's mind and in the minds of the ancients on the car. Standard, he dare not imagine that it can be the same as that of later generations, but at least, it must keep up with the development needs of people's livelihood in this period.

(End of this chapter)