Zhao Jun frowned and said, "It's just that the salaries in the Song Dynasty are already the highest in history. Now, just implementing the performance appraisal system to supervise them has caused a huge uproar. Lowering salaries and using salaries as performance is definitely not acceptable."

Officials of the Song Dynasty had enjoyed high salaries for too long. Zhao Jun had previously cut the salaries of senior court officials without much resistance because they really looked down upon the money.

Among these high-ranking officials who can reach the third or fourth rank and above, which one of them does not come from a wealthy family?

Even someone like Fan Zhongyan, whose family had no business interests and relied solely on a fixed salary, could easily take out more than 2,000 strings of cash, buy more than 1,000 acres of fertile land and establish the Fan Family Charity Estate. This shows how rich senior officials were.

But middle and lower-level officials are different.

In order for an official of the Song Dynasty to engage in business, he had to at least be a prefect and control the power of a state to have the capital to engage in business.

It was not so good for the prefects and below, as they relied entirely on high salaries to live a life of luxury.

If their wages are cut, it would be like cutting half their lives.

Therefore, it is probably not feasible to reduce wages and then use the completion of tasks assigned by the performance appraisal system as performance evaluation.

"Then what else can we give them as a reward?"

Fan Zhongyan also made the mistake of saying, "There are quotas for promotions. The higher you go, the harder it is to get promoted. I can't just open new departments and new positions."

"That's fine. Before I changed the system, there were over 24,000 incumbent officials. After the change, there are almost 40,000."

Zhao Jun was speechless and said, "I have dealt with those more than 10,000 idle and redundant officials, but the number of incumbent officials is increasing. If I create new positions, won't that cause trouble?"

He thought it over again and again, stroking his chin, and said, "I still need a raise, but I can change the name."

Fan Zhongyan opened his eyes wide and said, "Redundancy is already a serious problem. The court has to pay officials more than 10 million strings of cash every year. Moreover, clerks will be incorporated into civil service in the future. If the salary is increased, I am afraid that the three redundancies will become four redundancies."

"Stupid, I told you to change the name."

Zhao Jun rolled his eyes and said, "The basic salary will definitely not change, but I want to ask you, are the supplementary allowances, salary, supplementary salary, official land, silk, food, rewards, ice and charcoal, spices, etc., fixed?"

"Of course not."

Fan Zhongyan shook his head and said, "These things are inherently subject to price fluctuations, and sometimes the output of official farmland is not fixed. The court doesn't grant rewards every year. If the prices of spices, ice and charcoal, firewood, rice, oil, and salt rise, it's normal for the court to reduce its subsidies. Moreover, the amount is uneven. There was once a county lieutenant whose monthly salary was only 5,950 wen, and he even wrote a poem to mock it."

"That's it."

Zhao Jun smiled and said, "We can make a move on this. From now on, the annual supplementary allowances, official salaries, stipends, official fields, silk cloth, grain, rewards, ice and charcoal, and spices will all be reduced. The court will just have to give a reasonable explanation. It's not a direct cut, but a normal fluctuation. The officials may have suspicions, but they have no evidence. At the same time, we can incorporate the performance appraisal system into the basic salary."

"oh?"

Fan Zhongyan thought for a moment and said, "You mean to rob Peter to repair Paul?"

"Wrong."

Zhao Jun shook his head and said, "Due to rising prices and insufficient output from official farmland, the court's subsidies have been reduced. This kind of thing is quite common. But in order to motivate officials across the country, the court still gritted its teeth and gave them rewards, and even increased the incomes of local officials. Isn't this wise and wise?"

Simply put, it's like you are an employee with a salary of 20,000 yuan, but in fact, 20,000 yuan is just the average salary.

Your fixed salary is only four or five thousand yuan per month, and the rest of your income comes from daily necessities such as food, oil, salt, meal allowances, gas money, transportation fees, five insurances and one fund, allowances, and shopping cards provided by the company.

Depending on the company's operating income, this subsidy can sometimes be more, sometimes less. So while your salary might seem like 20,000, it might actually be 25,000 or 15,000, fluctuating up and down.

Such fluctuations were particularly evident in the Song Dynasty. Due to insufficient productivity, prices often changed rapidly. For example, prices in disaster areas could increase dozens of times overnight.

As a result, except for the officials in Bianliang whose income was relatively stable, the income of local officials was actually not stable.

A seventh-rank county magistrate in a small county received twelve strings of cash a month, five to three shi of grain as salary, additional official land, and various subsidies, such as tea, wine, kitchen supplies, firewood, wormwood, charcoal, salt, fodder for horses, and food and clothing for his personal servants.

Overall, the monthly income is about 100 guan.

But this situation is unstable. It can only be said that in the best case, the monthly income is 100 strings of cash. However, there are also times when the court is at war, there is a fiscal deficit, and no subsidies are issued. There is only basic salary, and even the basic salary is reduced or cannot be paid.

That's why the county lieutenant joked that his monthly income was less than six strings of cash (the basic salary of a county lieutenant should be 12 strings of cash per month).

Zhao Jun's meaning was very simple, which was to reduce the subsidies originally given by the court, and then incorporate performance into the performance appraisal system. This would be equivalent to treating the reduced subsidies as performance.

Although the salary has not changed much, it can greatly improve the enthusiasm of officials.

Moreover, it is normal for subsidies to fluctuate. As long as the court does not issue an explicit notice to cut your subsidies, then if the subsidies decrease for some reason, it is reasonable and the officials cannot find fault with it.

This is even good news for middle and lower-level officials, because in the past, subsidies fluctuated downward and officials only received a basic salary of more than ten guan per month.

But now that performance is included, if performance is calculated as two to three times the basic salary, then even if the subsidy cannot be paid in a certain year, the basic salary will still be 20 to 30 guan per month.

With the addition of subsidies, the income will be guaranteed regardless of drought or flood, and there will not be a situation where the subsidies increase in one year and the monthly income is hundreds of strings of coins, and the subsidies decrease in another year and the monthly income is only a few strings of coins.

Therefore, this policy is definitely not a bad policy for middle and lower-level officials.

In the first two chapters, someone said that using Kang Mazi's meme was offensive, so I deleted it. Actually, I didn't intend to use it, but a fellow reader happened to post it, so I just copied and pasted it for fun.

Also, I don’t know if anyone would think that the chapters discussing the reforms in detail are too boring. I personally think that this is very important.

Because this book actually mainly talks about top-down reform.

Although many people complained along the way that the protagonist couldn't do it, it might be because I'm not used to writing exciting stories, so I didn't make the protagonist's life too smooth, making everyone feel that reforming the Song Dynasty was difficult.

But no matter what, we have to do it.

Moreover, some people have always said that top-down reforms are bound to fail, but in fact, Shang Yang's reforms, Zhang Juzheng's reforms, Yongzheng's reforms, and my country's reform and opening up are all successful cases. There are examples from top to bottom and from bottom to top. There is really no need to keep using your opinions to influence my judgment.

I don't even dare to implement the reform methods I came up with. All the methods used are successful experiences in history, and the methods used are all successful methods among all the reforms I have found, because I am afraid of nitpicking.

In the end, they still make a lot of noise. I really don’t know what I should write to satisfy them.

(End of this chapter)