Liu Tan was stunned for a moment and asked, "Are there not enough people from the entire Shuofang?"
Huo Guang said, "We can't bring everyone to work. It's spring now, and that's the time to plant crops. The weather in the Northern Territory gets hot later. Planting hasn't started yet, but it will start soon."
Liu Tan scratched his head. This was truly a blind spot in his knowledge. He thought for a moment and humbly asked, "Then Prime Minister Huo said... could we recruit people from various counties? Especially those with less arable land?"
Huo Guang thought for a moment and said, "That's not right. Your Highness is offering quite a bit of wages. If they work from beginning to end, the money they earn in a year is equivalent to what they earn from farming for two or three years. Your Highness, if everyone knows about this, will anyone still be willing to farm?"
Liu Tan didn't say anything. In fact, the high wages he offered were not intended to destroy the market economy. The wages were mainly for the people of Shuofang City.
After all, after experiencing a war, many people still have land, but the good seeds in their homes have been stolen or burned. Now even if they are asked to farm, they have nothing to plant.
If the wages are too low, then people will starve to death in the future.
To Liu Tan, every person in Shuofang City is very precious, and he would feel sad if one of them died!
However, other counties were not affected by the war, so the local people should still focus on farming. If they all came to work after knowing this, even if the harvest this year was not what Liu Tan would be happy to see.
Of course, another solution is to use household registration to differentiate wages, so that the wages of people who are not from Shuofang City will be reduced.
What is worrying is not the lack of money but the inequality. They all do the same work, so why do the people in Shuofang City get more?
No matter what Liu Tan’s reasons are, what the common people see is very simple: they just see whether the money in their hands is the same.
If they really do this, the Northern Border Kingdom will be divided in the future. People in other places will feel that they are being treated differently, and people in Shuofang City will also feel that people in other places are greedy. This is not acceptable.
Liu Tan took a deep breath and said, "Well... let's do it one by one. We can't miss the spring plowing. First, I'll lay off some of the workers, and then you can arrange for them to be recruited."
Although everyone did not differentiate between the current industries of Shuofang City during the discussion, they were still divided in actual operation. Except for the iron ore, all other minerals belonged to Liu Tan himself, and the people working in those mines were also hired by Liu Tan.
As for building a city, it would be a levy imposed by the imperial court. To be honest, the money given would definitely not be as much as that given by Liu Tan, but building a city is the top priority.
Huo Guang hesitated a bit. "There's not much that needs to be done to build the city. Your Highness doesn't need to slow down because of this."
Liu Tan shook his head and said, "There's nothing to slow down. We'll just need to reduce the number of people working at the Copper Mine, the Broken Evil Gold Mine, and the Cinnabar Mine."
These minerals are not of much help in basic people's livelihood.
The faster the copper mine is mined, the more money Liu Tan has. After all, part of it is used to mint coins, and part of it is used to make various bronze products.
The Broken Evil Gold Mine was even more so. How many ordinary people could afford Broken Evil Gold? Even the noble ladies in Chang'an City might not be able to afford it. Or rather, under Liu Tan's control, they basically couldn't buy it because Liu Tan hadn't opened a shop yet.
Liu Tan planned to use the shop that was previously disliked by Princess Dangli to sell gemstone jewelry.
So what if the shop wasn't located in a prosperous area? If it really opened and the two princesses were there, there would be no shortage of supporters.
Now that I think about it, it was right to artificially control the number of gems entering the market. Otherwise, if there was no restraint, and the mining quantity was rashly reduced now, the price of gems would definitely fluctuate dramatically.
Now the price is in a stable range, and the accumulated resources from previous mining will be enough for a while.
As for the coal mine, Liu Tan did not dare to reduce the number of people.
There was nothing we could do about the fact that the honeycomb coal produced by the coal mine last year was only enough for Chang'an. Time was too tight, and we had no choice but to do this to maximize profits.
We can't do this this year no matter what, at least the people in Shuofang can use it.
Anyway, the more high-quality honeycomb coal is produced, the more ordinary or even inferior honeycomb coal will be produced.
After waiting for a while, Liu Tan will even lower the local prices a little.
Since there is no transportation cost locally, why was it sold at a high price when it was sent to Chang'an? It was because transportation was difficult. Not only did it cost a lot of money, but it also caused a lot of losses.
Huo Guang didn't have a particularly good solution, so he nodded and said, "This is the only way. If so, Your Highness will have to write an edict."
Liu Tan was puzzled: "What kind of decree is this?"
Huo Guang said, "Although the news of your generous wages hasn't spread nationwide, many surrounding villages have heard of it. Many people have come here with their families to seek a living. Some are refugees from last winter's disaster, but others are tenant farmers with legitimate land. Your Highness needs to have the county governors strictly control this."
Liu Tan immediately said, "This is difficult to control. You can issue a warning to each county in the name of the Prime Minister. I will have my subordinates strengthen the screening of foreign populations."
When he said this, he couldn't help but smile bitterly. Who would have thought that even though he offered high wages, there would still be problems.
Huo Guang left with a solution that was not a solution. Although it seemed to have solved the problem temporarily, it was actually a choice that harmed Liu Tan's own interests.
He himself didn't care, but the income of the invisible national treasury decreased again - Liu Tan had to pay taxes when selling those things. His reduction in production meant that he sold fewer things, and with less tax paid, wouldn't the income of the national treasury be less?
Liu Tan held Lu Xuan's letter and read it carefully again.
I was just so surprised that Lu Xuan went to fight the King of Youguli that I didn't read the rest carefully. I only saw the sentence "My heart is the same as before."
After a closer look, he discovered that Lu Xuan had already answered his question. He simply told him not to worry too much, as the construction of his royal city was progressing smoothly and was almost complete.
When Liu Tan saw this, he was full of questions. How long has it been built? He has so few people and they have to follow him to fight wars and build cities. It has been built so quickly, right? It must be a shoddy project, right?
When he continued to read, he saw the reason: because Lu Xuan led his men to fight here and there, he got a lot of prisoners. Not to mention other prisoners from Dayuan, they were enough. At the beginning, Lu Xuan only escorted the King of Dayuan to the capital, and kept the others for himself.
Of course, Liu Che probably doesn't care about other people. In Liu Che's eyes, those people are probably not as good as a horse.
Because of these captives, even though he was leading his men to fight everywhere, the construction of the city was much faster than before.
captive……?
Liu Tan's eyes lit up, and he felt as if the door to a new world had been opened. He turned around and said, "Go call Li Buyan and Wei Buyi and tell them I have something important to tell them to do."
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