The Prosperous Era of Longwan

The annual fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty court was roughly divided into two parts. One part was used by the court to maintain the daily operations of the dynasty, including royal family income, official salary, disaster relief and water conservancy, military border defense, etc.; the other part was given to the emperor for himself and the palace. overhead.

With the expansion of the foreign bureaucracy, the increase in lumi brought about by the rapid growth of the clan population, the increase in border defense expenditures caused by the decline of the military, and the continuous expansion of the size of the palace, the fiscal revenue of the imperial court could not meet the needs of expenditures, and began to A deficit occurs.

After this phenomenon occurred, although the emperors of the Ming Dynasty still adhered to the ancestral precepts and did not easily mine, they still had to compromise in the face of financial pressure that needed to be resolved.

Whenever the finances were short of money, the emperor would think about making money by opening mines, so the emperor would issue an order to open a mine, then the miners would cause trouble, and after the chaos was suppressed, he would issue an order to ban it, which became a lingering strange circle of mineral mining in the Ming Dynasty.

"In fact, Wei Chen has always felt that whether the imperial court is opening a mine or a workshop, it should pay monthly wages to workers and craftsmen according to the wages on the market, instead of just hiring some people, and some people's labor is only used to pay the imperial court of corvee.

In particular, everyone in the imperial court actually supported the implementation of the One Whip Law, and the greatest benefit of the One Whip Law to the people was that they no longer had to worry about being drafted into service by the court, and could only farm with peace of mind.

In this way, in addition to income, each mine also has a fixed expenditure, and the remaining part is profit, that is, making money.

Let’s not talk about the official mines run by the court. If the mines are run by the private sector, the court can also tax the mines accordingly. At the same time, it can also supervise whether the mine owners treat the miners harshly.

You know, when miners cause trouble, it's mostly because they're treated badly.

In Wei Chen's opinion, the imperial court could exclude the imperial censors from the Metropolitan Procuratorate from inspecting various prefectures, find out the distribution of minerals, and list some of the mines that are easy to mine and large-scale as official mines. The imperial court can send personnel to be responsible for the mining, and the profits can be made internally and externally. Library.

Some smaller mines can be contracted to private parties for mining, and the highest bidder wins through bidding.

The local government regularly sends personnel to inspect accounts, collect taxes, and verify the treatment of miners, so as to ensure that miners will no longer cause chaos."

Wei Guangde slowly expressed his thoughts. Although there was no change in the expression on Emperor Longqing's face, there was no turning back when he fired his bow. Wei Guangde could only finish what he said and make it clear.

Of course, Wei Guangde also had selfish motives on this issue, because once the imperial court approved the decree, he could openly intervene in mineral mining.

Before that, if he had intervened in the mines, it would not be as simple as doing business, because the court would not casually agree to the mining. Now most of the mine owners are mine thieves, and they will be tried in court once they are exposed.

If the imperial court contracts out mines, I will buy a few of them. In the future, my sons and grandsons can say loudly when they go out: "My family has mines."

Thinking about it makes you feel energetic.

In his last life, Wei Guangde envied those coal bosses who made money every day and made money while lying down.

Of course, when the time comes, we will have to find nobles to help lobby the government and the public.

Last time, because of the incident in Jingying, Yan Yin was used as compensation. Wei Guangde also took the opportunity to introduce them to the business side, so that they no longer simply sold Yan Yin to the big salt merchants, but participated in the sharing.

As long as they participate, they will know the huge profit margins of salt merchants, and they can't be jealous whether they want to or not.

Who doesn’t love money?

Now that they have attracted people to do business, the next step is to use mining to continue to attract them to mining. In the future, when the minerals are produced, they will not have to build workshops to process them, and then use the commercial network to sell them.

A perfect cycle is created. As long as the nobles taste the sweetness, they will definitely discover the benefits. At that time, their eyes will gradually shift from the fields to industry and commerce.

Only with the establishment of industry and commerce can the conditions for commercial tax be levied.

Although there are many workshops and craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty now, they are all small and insignificant.

Because they are small, it is actually difficult to collect taxes because most of them are based on family-style production, with perhaps a small number of hired workers.

Those large workshops in Jiangsu and Zhejiang all charge taxes based on the number of looms.

Therefore, it is not that there was no commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty as later generations said, but that the conditions were not met and it was difficult to collect it.

The taxes on salt, tea, iron and textiles levied by the Ming court were actually commercial taxes.

Of course, the current division of the four industries in the Ming Dynasty was actually problematic. It restricted the flow of population between various industries. By this time, it had actually restricted economic development.

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang divided the common people into four types of household registration, namely military households, civilian households, craftsmen households, and kitchen households, which were the four industries.

These four household registrations are the four professional statuses, and they are stipulated that descendants must inherit them from generation to generation and cannot be changed.

He divided the population according to occupation and did not allow people to change their identities. This was equivalent to prescribing the proportional relationship between supply and demand for each product.

It was certainly beneficial to use this method in the early Ming Dynasty, as it could ensure a stable supply of products, which was crucial for a newly established dynasty.

However, Zhu Yuanzhang's design has a serious problem, that is, the proportional relationship between various professional identities may have been relatively good when he first designed it, but he could not ensure that people with every professional identity had a good relationship. If you persist, there is no way to ensure that people with different professional identities will reproduce at exactly the same rate.

After a little longer time, due to different reproduction rates due to various reasons, the population numbers of the four household registrations will appear.

If the population of certain types of household registrations increases significantly, while the population of other household registrations does not change much, this balance of supply and demand will be broken.

In addition, there are people who don’t love their profession and run out to do other jobs. The government cannot keep an eye on everyone for a long time and must work according to the prescribed occupations. The proportion of the four occupations becomes even more problematic. .

This made the quasi-planned economy in the early Ming Dynasty, similar to that of later generations, increasingly unsustainable after decades of operation.

Although most of these people have become hidden households and are not listed in the government household registers, it seems that they really exist after all.

That's why Wei Guangde deliberately blurred the household registration restrictions in his previous words, that is, whether he is a civilian household, a farmer household, or a craftsman household, or a kitchen household household, he can enter the mines to work and get paid.

Of course, in fact, most of the people nowadays don't care much about household registration. Except for items such as imperial examinations that need to be reported to the government, everyone is basically the same.

Of course, military households are not among them because of their special characteristics. This is also the reason why military households fled in large numbers.

Wei Guangde knew that the issue of the Four Industries was a small matter from the perspective of future generations, but in the Ming Dynasty today, it was indeed a major issue related to the long-term stability of the country, so he did not intend to propose changes for the time being.

If another time traveler comes and knows what he wants to do, he will naturally tell him that what he wants to do is actually more radical than Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng.

Gao Gong's reform idea was actually relatively narrow, that is, he did not do anything else but just rectify the administration of officials and restore the court to the situation in the early Ming Dynasty.

Compared with the early Ming Dynasty, it was indeed a very beautiful era.

Zhang Juzheng, on the other hand, focuses on the present. He believes that if a problem is discovered, then he should find a way to solve it. If the tax system is not suitable, then he should change to a whip method. If the government is overstaffed, then implement the examination method to improve efficiency. If the river is blocked, then dredge it. The imperial court If you have no money, clear the land to increase income and find the hidden fields.

As someone who came from below, he naturally knew what was going on among the people. Although he knew that there was great resistance, because it benefited the country and the people, he would not hesitate to suppress the imperial power but also forcefully promote it.

What Wei Guangde wanted to do was indeed use concepts from later generations, and he wanted to fundamentally reform slowly and erase all the inappropriate things set by Zhu Yuanzhang.

It is definitely not appropriate to move the Ming Dynasty from feudal society to socialist society in one step, so first move closer to capitalist countries.

Only when the economy developed could the financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty be resolved.

To put it bluntly, it was not that the Ming emperor was stupid and did not know how to change money, but that he was bound by the rules set by Zhu Yuanzhang.

What the Ming Dynasty needed was a courageous emperor, an emperor who dared to make bold reforms.

But for the person in front of him, Wei Guangde still knew that Emperor Longqing was not such a person, so he could only act cautiously and do it bit by bit. Even if he failed in the end, it didn't matter.

Wei Guangde said everything he wanted to say, but Emperor Longqing sat on the throne without saying a word.

The matter of mining can actually be done with a decree, without the need to discuss with court officials. However, judging from the results of each mining operation, it seems that it always ends up causing big trouble.

Emperor Longqing was afraid of trouble. In order to collect some money, he forced the people to rebel, and even gave money to quell the chaos.

After weighing for a long time, Emperor Longqing finally said: "Let's do this Shandai. What you just said, go back and write a charter and give it to me. I also have to think about it carefully. This matter is so big that I can't jump to conclusions casually."

"According to the order."

Wei Guangde lowered his head and replied.

The emperor didn't express his position, and Wei Guangde didn't think anything of it. It was just a waste of words, and it actually had no loss to him.

"Can you tell me exactly what percentage of the imperial court's income the clan accounts for, how much military pay is, and how the imperial court's income is spent.

Although there are many memorials to the Ministry of Finance, my head felt heavy after reading them. "

Emperor Longqing asked again. He now felt more and more that the clan expenses were a big problem and a solution must be found as soon as possible.

After listening to the emperor's inquiry, Wei Guangde lowered his head and made another estimate, and then said: "The royal family's expenses account for about 30% of the national income, 20% for military pay, 10% for the palace, and the remaining 40% is officials' salaries and various other expenses. Engineering overhead.”

The Ming Dynasty not only supported a huge clan population, but also a large number of officials and the groups that relied on them for survival.

Later generations all said that the Ming Dynasty used tens of millions of people to support 100,000 officials. This ratio may seem low, but in fact there were a large number of temporary workers in the yamen, and they were actually supported by the people.

It's just that the establishment established by Zhu Yuanzhang is just that. The 100,000 people are only officials, and the officials and servants are not included in this.

Similarly, according to the rules set by Zhu Yuanzhang, the number of eunuchs in the palace was limited to 60.

60 people, this number is extremely incredible, but in fact this number only includes eunuchs with a certain grade, and does not include a large number of chamberlains without grades.

"10% of the palace? How much is that?"

Emperor Longqing only spent money and asked about the situation of his inner treasury from time to time, but he really didn't have much idea of ​​how much money the palace spent in a year.

"About two million taels."

Wei Guangde replied.

Emperor Longqing frowned again, two million taels? He recalled that he had issued orders to the household ministers several times before asking for the amount of silver.

Yes, the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was not three million taels. The figure of three million taels was only the gold and silver income of the imperial court, and did not include physical taxes.

If calculated according to the actual prices at that time, the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty should be between 20 and 30 million taels per year. This figure is roughly equivalent to the annual treasury income of the Kangxi Dynasty in the early Qing Dynasty, which was more than 40 million taels.

As for Qianlong's time, the annual revenue of the treasury reached a maximum of 80 million taels of silver, which was related to inflation caused by the large inflow of silver.

After all, the price comparison between the Ming Dynasty and that time, but when it comes to food prices, one stone of food now costs less than one tael of silver, while in the Qianlong Dynasty it was one or two and a half, and the price has almost doubled.

The only difference may be that the clan policy of the Qing Dynasty was better than that of the Ming Dynasty, and it solved the clan problem very well.

Military expenditures accounted for more than half of the Qing government's fiscal expenditures in the middle and early stages, which was almost equivalent to all the Ming Dynasty's military expenditures and clan Lumi being used to support the army. The army also expanded territory for the Qing government during this period. Occupy a large area of ​​land.

In addition, there is the palace expenditure. Before the Qianlong Dynasty, the Qing court's palace expenditure was only a few hundred thousand taels per year, but it only increased to two million taels during the Qianlong Dynasty, which was comparable to that of the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, the expenses of the palace are also very high. After all, the palace is full of nobles, and food and clothing are the most expensive.

Although he felt that the expenses in the palace were too high, Emperor Longqing would not think of reducing expenses. That would be a disservice to himself and the people around him, and he could not do it.

However, if the clan can find a way to reduce the amount, it would be financially comfortable.

Of course, he quickly came to his senses, and the clan clan member Lumi could only think about whether he really wanted to do it, fearing that his Qianqing Palace would be flooded with memorials from the feudal prince's palace the next day.

"When I was still in Yuzhuan, I remember asking you to find a way to solve the Lumi problem. I also mentioned this matter after I ascended the throne. Is there a charter now?"

Since he knew that the clan issue was a drag on the court, Emperor Longqing still wanted to ask Wei Guangde if he had any way to solve the matter.

"Your Majesty, the affairs of the clan are governed by the "Huang Ming Ancestor Instructions", and it is really difficult to change it. Unless your Majesty is willing to change the regulations, such as running the clan's four industries so that they can support themselves and the court will no longer distribute Lumi, otherwise It’s difficult.”

In the past, court officials also submitted many memorials, all involving the reform of the clan, but except for Zhese, most of them were shelved because they all touched the policies set by Zhu Yuanzhang.

In addition, in order to quell the dissatisfaction of the clan and solve the shortage of Lumi, grains were transported from surrounding provinces. In short, whenever trouble occurred, we would find a way to send some Lumi there. It was nothing more than adding discounts and using treasure notes when distributing Lumi. Replace Lumi.

There were so many things that could be changed in the Ming Dynasty that Wei Guangde sometimes felt that he had no idea where to start.

But I know I know that these actions will not get around Zhu Yuanzhang, the deceiver of his descendants.