Zhu Youxiao handles government affairs every day, only those important things. The remaining memorials are basically not read. The same is true on this day. Zhu Youxiao handled a large stack of memorials for less than one-thirty, and it was announced that it had been completed.
Both Zhang Yan and Liang Fei were a little unbelievable, and reached out to carry the pile of memorials to her and read them.
What surprised them was that these memorials were basically reported to oppose taxation by the tax bureau, or reported to the imperial village occupying the land, or reported to oppose the three-class joint system of the factory guards.
Looking at the stacks of high memorials, all of them were all over the place. Those who didn’t know the reason would think that the world would be in chaos!
Zhang Yan and Wang Qingzhi read these memorials briefly, and were both worried. After all, they had no experience, so they naturally didn't know the core issues.
"Your Majesty, the ministers are now opposing the collection of commercial taxes and the encroachment of the dominant land by the imperial village. This may not be a solution." Zhang Yan thought about it and suggested to Zhu Youxiao, "It's better to discuss more with the ministers."
"Baozhu, do you think I am like an unreasonable person?" Zhu Youxiao asked seriously. Zhang Yan shook her head immediately. The emperor was easy-going and was still very reasonable in his work.
"That's right. If it's really a disaster for the country and the people, I can't do it. This commercial tax must be collected, and the land is also wasteland. Those landlords and powerful people don't care about it on weekdays, and will jump out when the imperial village is about to be opened." Zhu Youxiao explained, and then took commercial tax as an example to introduce Zhang Yan and Wang Qingzhi to the financial and class confrontation issues of the Ming Dynasty.
The class contradictions in the late Ming Dynasty were already very serious.
If a society has no contradictions, there is no motivation for development. For example, a rich man has a big house to live in, and a poor man also wants to live in a big house, so he will work hard to become a rich man. This is the driving force for conflicts to arise.
Appropriate contradictions are still beneficial to social development.
However, when the conflict develops to an extreme extent, the poor no longer see hope, and are forced to not even have enough food and cannot survive, they will start to use violence to solve the problem, so they will revolutionize and rebel. They shouted: Eat and drink the mother, and the King of Rebellion will not pay the food when he comes! Then they rise up.
The huge gap between the rich and the poor has caused serious class contradictions, and the people at the bottom of the Ming Dynasty have already begun to restless.
About thirty years ago, the rural natural economy in the Ming Dynasty was still good. Farmers could be self-sufficient and reproduce in the countryside. Although their lives were poor, they were stable and healthy.
Around the twenty years between 1604 and 1624, the commodity economy of the Ming Dynasty became increasingly rampant, the rural natural economy was impacted, and the rural economic chain was destroyed. Farmers were forced to change their production model and sell agricultural products to towns in exchange for daily necessities. This also gave birth to the grand occasion of the Ming Dynasty in the past twenty years, with very low prices and extremely prosperous economy. However, behind this phenomenon, the transformational farmers were exploited by merchants and still could not make money, which led to the bankruptcy of a large number of farmers.
Bankrupt farmers were forced to enter towns, similar to migrant workers in later generations. In towns, the living, diet, labor intensity and other aspects of these migrant workers (migrants) cannot be guaranteed. Not only is it difficult to be stable, but their physical health is greatly damaged. What is even more terrifying is that migrant workers in these days are not like migrant workers in later generations. Migrant workers in later generations can no longer survive in the city and can still return to the countryside. After all, the land in later generations cannot be bought and sold. Although there is less, it is enough to prevent people from starving to death.
But these days are different. Migrant workers who cannot survive in cities cannot go back to the countryside. They can only form slums in cities like the poor in India and South America in later generations.
Why does the commodity economy have such terrible consequences when it has impacted the rural natural economy?
For example, a tenant farmer rents ten acres of land. Then these ten acres of land are not only used to pay the tenant rent and the grain required by the family, but also plant a mu of cotton, and then men plough and women weave it. Housewifes rely on textile cloth to not only provide cloth for the family, but also increase income.
However, as soon as the commodity economy develops, the cloth produced by textile factories in Songjiang and other provinces hit the countryside, and the home-girl cloth can no longer be sold, or it is worthless.
At the same time, in the past, the commodities needed by farmers in rural areas were generally simple division of labor and transactions, and money was circulated in the rural natural economic circle. However, under the impact of a large number of commodities, money flowed to towns. When there was no money in the rural natural economic circle, farmers would have to sell agricultural products to towns if they wanted to continue to obtain necessities of daily necessities, instead of continuing to live the self-sufficiency of the previous life.
If the production model is not changed, you may not be able to afford salt, wear clothes, buy wine for sacrifices, and other daily necessities.
Gradually, agricultural products are all commercialized, and commercialized agricultural products are often single in varieties, so that industrial division of labor is carried out, and farmers are exploited very seriously. Just like later farmers, many fruits cannot be sold at the place of production for 1 kilogram and 1 yuan, and can be transported to big cities, and the price directly rises to more than 5 yuan. What's more, in this era, transportation conditions are much worse, and farmers are exploited even more severely. Moreover, agricultural products are prone to being unsold. Once agricultural products are unsold, farmers will go bankrupt in a large area.
The prices of goods were so low during the Wanli period, mainly because the countryside was generally poor and had a large demand for money. Under competition, agricultural products could not be sold at good prices. However, in the competition, farmers went bankrupt in large numbers, and bankrupt farmers entered cities to expand their demand for agricultural products. The scale of agricultural production began to shrink, and prices began to rise continuously.
Under such a broad context, if the agricultural tax is increased, it would be a death sentence. Naturally, commercial tax can only be considered in terms of tax collection.
Faced with these bankrupt farmers, there were basically only two ways. One was to follow the Qing Dynasty and regard curbing the commodity economy as a basic national policy. This policy was implemented during the period of Cixi. The other was to solve the problem by market means, participate in the development of the commodity economy, and guide it.
Zhu Youxiao is now taking the second route, first developing royal capital, making money from the commodity economy, thereby increasing workers' treatment and stabilizing farmers' production. The core is to increase employment.
"The collection of commercial tax cannot be too hasty. Now the scale of the collection is in the Northern Zhili area. Expansion can be temporarily suspended to prevent businessmen from rebounding." Seeing that there were indeed a lot of memorials against the collection of commercial tax, Zhu Youxiao had to consider temporarily restraining.
Don't think that those businessmen won't join forces.
Nowadays, officials, scholars, their pens and mouthpieces control public opinion. As long as they all scream, even merchants far away in Guangzhou and Hainan will worry about whether the emperor will collect business taxes on them.
So at this time, Zhu Youxiao cannot be too impatient, or even stop, so that other businessmen think that they only collect business taxes in Northern Zhili and develop monopoly business in Northern Zhili, thus differentiating merchants in various provinces. PS: In the past few days, some posts that seriously lower others' IQs have appeared in the book review area. Most of their thoughts are at the level of elementary school students who either fight or kill, very extreme. You explain higher things to him, but don't understand them, and even if you understand them, you have to use fallacies to argue endlessly, trying to highlight your wisdom and stellarity by belittling others. Okay! The author really has no time to pretend to be B with these elementary school students, and there is no obligation to save their morality. If you have this time, the author might as well write two more chapters to give back to normal readers, so if you don't understand them, you will get rid of excessive posts. The author will directly delete them.
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Chapter completed!