The most greedy Emperor Wanli ordered the Royal Printing Bureau to work hard to attract business and do business.
As long as you pay, any book will be printed. It is said that even the propaganda materials for the Wenxiang Rebellion were printed by the Royal Printing Bureau.
They paid the money, so this professional ethics and business reputation, and this muddled review are really touching.
Therefore, Zhu Youxiao's creation of "Da Ming Forum" was not difficult and even made a small profit.
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The emperor is so hardworking! Is he crazy? He approves resignations without delay.
The emperor was a bit hasty. Those who resigned were all Donglin gentlemen and upright people. He occasionally made a mistake in judging people, so a light punishment or a stern warning would be enough.
The emperor is so wise. It’s time for our five parties to gain power. It would be great if the Donglin Party could get out of here!
The uproar and shock caused by Li Sancai's corruption case made some people happy, some sad, some regretful, and some applauded.
But the emperor's use of people is intriguing. He did not use people from the three or five parties, nor did he use people from the Hanlin Academy. Instead, he directly promoted Tao Langxian and Li Qiyuan from local governors to join the cabinet, which is extremely rare.
Tao Langxian had no party. If we had to divide it, he was good friends with Xiong Tingbi, so he could barely be considered a member of the Chu Party!
Li Qiyuan was truly non-partisan and spent most of his time as an official outside the capital. He worked in Henan, Shaanxi, and Nanjing, and rarely served in the imperial court in the capital.
Sun Chengzong sympathized with the Donglin faction, but maintained neutrality; Yuan Keli was the same. Although he valued integrity and was known for his outspokenness, he opposed factional struggles.
As for Yuan Shizhen and Lu Shanji, both fourth-rank officials, they were proficient in their professions and there was nothing to speculate about.
"In the court, there are either Donglin or the Five Factions. There are very few people who are independent or neutral. If the emperor wants to abandon factional strife, I'm afraid there won't be many people available!"
"Aren't Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou, Fang Zhenru and others from the Donglin clan? They were all given important official positions outside the capital."
"In my opinion, His Majesty may not necessarily abandon Donglin. Instead, he quite appreciates honest and upright officials."
"That makes sense, that makes sense. The emperor hates corruption, and punishing Li Sancai is just one example."
"The emperor is also extremely disgusted with unscrupulous merchants. He has severely punished the Tongzhou merchants who were involved with Li Sancai for bribery and tax evasion. They have all been severely punished and are crying out in despair!"
"If there is no businessman, there will be no treachery. Only by emphasizing agriculture and neglecting business can we consolidate the foundation of the country."
Inside the teahouse, the scholars were discussing and analyzing the matter. They were all very concerned about the palace examination, and even about its impact on their future careers in officialdom.
"Brother Liu." Wen Anzhi took a sip of tea and asked Liu Lishun, who had just put down his newspaper, "Why are you so concerned about His Majesty clearing out the imperial farm?"
Liu Lishun smiled and said, "I feel that Your Majesty's method of clearing out the rebels is quite profound. I wonder what the effect would be if it were implemented nationwide?"
After a pause, Liu Lishun sighed and said, "In Henan, most of the land is concentrated in the hands of wealthy landlords. The people who have no land or rent land are suffering greatly!"
Zhu Youxiao borrowed some methods from later generations when clearing out the imperial farms. All of them were targeted at landless farmers, and taxes were levied on a profit-sharing basis, with payment allowed in kind or in silver.
Farmers in the territory were taxed at a rate of "50% for the people and 50% for the government." After five years, the land returned to the farmers. At first glance, it seemed the government was corrupt and the taxes were heavy, splitting the land 50-50.
But it was later added that this tax included the Dingyin, labor service, Yao labor, etc. In other words, the farmers in the territory only had to pay half of the harvest, and all other miscellaneous taxes and levies were not collected.
According to later research, the agricultural tax in the Ming Dynasty was not high, and the highest did not exceed one-tenth of the output of farmland, and it might even be only one-twentieth or one-thirtieth.
But why did the peasants live such a hard life in the late Ming Dynasty, to the point where they had to rise up in rebellion just to have food to eat?
There are many reasons, the frequent disasters during the Little Ice Age being the main one, but man-made disasters cannot be ignored either.
For example, the Dingyin tax was a head tax. Whether you owned land or not, or whether your harvest was good or bad, you couldn't escape it. The more people in your family, the heavier the burden.
Especially for farmers, whose income is not high to begin with, the burden can be imagined with a large family; but for the rich landlords, that little tax is just a drop in the bucket.
Moreover, as an important source of fiscal revenue, the Ming Dynasty court allocated Dingyin to local officials.
This allowed for considerable manipulation: local officials could either underreport the population and embezzle directly, or accept bribes from the wealthy to reduce or even exempt them from paying taxes, thus shifting the burden to the common people.
Now let’s talk about the “One Whip Law” implemented by Zhang Juzheng, which was to convert all taxes into cash.
From the perspective of history, this is certainly progressive. However, in its implementation, it has not brought convenience and benefits to farmers, nor has it increased national income.
For example: Every time the tax deadline comes, farmers have to turn their grain into silver in order to pay taxes!
The price of grain in the market will basically fall accordingly, that is, silver is expensive and grain is cheap, and farmers will always have to sell a lot of grain to make up the difference. Three months later, grain prices have almost returned to normal levels.
This is not a normal fluctuation in food prices, but a collaboration between grain merchants and bureaucrats to lower prices.
But the country received the full amount of money, so it shouldn’t suffer any loss, right?
In fact, if the government used the tax that farmers had to collect by selling 100 dan of grain to spend, the price of grain would have probably returned to normal levels, and only 60 dan of grain could be bought on the market.
That's how it is: temporal differences in grain prices increase the burden on farmers, while government revenue does not increase, and may even decrease. The only ones who truly profit from this are merchants and the bureaucrats involved.
Of course, it wasn't all bad. Transporting grain was costly, and it was far less convenient than delivering silver to the national treasury.
But for ordinary people, it is understandable to call the Single Whip Law "a single whip to cruelly punish the people."
Another long-lasting problem brought about by the Single Whip Law was the problem of fire consumption. Because taxes had to be paid in silver, the silver had to be melted down, which inevitably led to losses.
As a result, fire consumption became a clever means for local governments to accumulate wealth, and was also passed on to the people, becoming a heavy burden.
It is undeniable that Zhang Juzheng's reforms were effective and the Single Whip System was also advanced.
However, Zhu Youxiao's reform would not be a copycat, but rather a more advanced one, preserving the essence and removing the dross. Of course, this was only a small step, and was very experimental and exploratory.
First, the policy of clearing out the imperial farms contained the implication of "spreading the ding silver tax into the land", which meant that the ding silver tax was included in the total tax, thus bringing the ding silver revenue into the central government's treasury.
Secondly, after paying taxes for five years, the land will belong to the farmers, which has the shadow of "public land distribution" and increases the number of self-cultivating farmers.
Of course, there is also the practice of setting taxes based on the average of the local harvest over the past five years, which reduces the room for corruption among officials.
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