After rewarding the ministers, there was nothing worth mentioning on the final journey.

However, Liu Bei's thoughts were gone, and he had less than half of his accompanying troops, so he didn't have to consider military supplies to disturb the people. It took him more than two months to stop and stop.

For example, when passing by Zhongshan, considering that Anxi County was where Liu Bei worked for two years, he would definitely have to remember the bitterness and sweetness, which delayed until Mid-Autumn Festival in August.

In Anxi County and Lunu County, there are days of reminiscing about the bitterness and sweetness, and recalling the past glorious years. Liu Bei even tried to ask Li Su where he was in Lunu, and wanted to give Li Su the opportunity to return home secretly in glory.

However, Li Su, the black tyrant, of course, refused all attempts in this regard, so Liu Bei did not insist anymore

Liu Bei knew that Li Su was born in a humble background, but he thought that Li Su was just inferior to his family background, so he didn't want to be known. If he was secretly visiting his friends when he was a teenager, he should still be embarrassed.

Who would have thought that Li Su's black household was so completely out of Liu Bei's imagination.

After passing by Lu Nu and Anxi, the next stop will pass by Wuji County and then enter Changshan County.

Considering that his concubine Zhen Jiang and many of the important officials and consular generals around him had wives and concubines from the Zhen family, Liu Bei arranged for favor in advance. When he was in Zhuo County, he issued an order to allow the concubines in the palace to return home to visit relatives.

Even the imperial concubine Zhen Jiang could go back to her hometown, so it would be more convenient for other ministers to have wives and concubines, and they would definitely have to go home to visit relatives.

So from the end of July, several convoys set off from Luoyang and walked together, bringing Li Su's concubine Zhen Mi, Zhuge Jin's wife Zhen Rong, and Guan Yu's concubine.

The Northern Tour team finally celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival in Wuji County, Zhongshan County.

He also sent people to Zhending County, Changshan County, which is just a Hutuo River from Wuji County, to bring all the distant relatives left by Zhao Yun, the old friends he had when he was young, and he could find them. There was another banquet for several days.

It was about half a month before and after Wuji and Zhending. In early September, I finally headed south along Taihang Mountain and arrived at Yecheng.

This road also made Liu Bei feel very moved, because after he met Li Su in Anxi County, a team of people went south to find Jia Cong, the governor of Jizhou, to report Zhang Chun to rebel. This was the road he took. Liu Guan and Zhang also killed many black mountain bandits who were blocking the road with their own hands along the way.

What's more coincidental is that after reporting to Jia Cong that time, because Xin Ping and Ju Su assisted in mediation, Jia Cong sent Liu Bei and Li Su to Beijing to report the relationship between the thieves. Therefore, the last journey back to Luoyang from Yecheng was exactly the same as the path Liu Bei had taken fifteen years ago.

However, now there are 20,000 elite heavily armored cavalry protectors, and the Black Mountain bandits have been completely eliminated for many years.

Even people like Li Su have an illusion that they feel like they are participating in the group building of a sweet and sweet group, and they have to re-experience the hard and hard paths they have taken in the struggle.

He arrived in Yecheng on the tenth day of September and stationed for more than ten days. He sorted out the affairs of the local aristocratic families in Jizhou. He continued to go south at the end of the month. In mid-October, he finally crossed the Yellow River from Pinggao, Henei, and returned to Luoyang from Mengjin.

The newly revived land of the five Kanto prefectures this year, plus the hometown of Youzhou that was revived last year, have finally passed away. A total of millions of people have watched the new emperor from afar, and have initially established people's understanding of the new era.

...

After returning to Luoyang, it was already winter after all, and a year of production and granary collection and storage were completed. The court's daily civil affairs work was basically done, and it was just waiting for the emperor and the prime minister's instructions.

The harvests of the year in various places have also been reported. It seems that the disasters in various places are within controllable range, and the people have somewhat recovered through the first year after the war.

Although the agricultural tax head tax was exempted, the court had a little harder, but this year's bond copying and sale work was still steadily promoted. Liu Ba, the Minister of Finance, was still very powerful and maintained the operation of the court.

During the second half of October, and even for most of November, Liu Bei and Li Su were paying off their debts for the inspection work in the previous six months.

If you have too much fun, you have to work hard for a while, combining work and rest, so you either read various reports or give instructions every day.

As the twelfth lunar month is approaching and the busiest time has passed, everyone can prepare for a frugal New Year and pray for peace and prosperity.

After all, next year should be the first year since the Zhongping period of the Han Dynasty, when there was no need to fight, small-scale bandit suppression and Zhao'an adaptation of defeated soldiers and bandits were not counted.

Calculate the time, there will be no bloody wars for twenty consecutive years.

This day was about the second day of the twelfth lunar month, and one day after the grand court meeting at the beginning of the month. Liu Bei took advantage of the last month before the New Year to sit down with Prime Minister Li Su and drink some wine, and then summarized all the work of subordinates of the staff and secretary to take a look.

Let’s see what else has not been done this year and we should focus on urging it.

After some review, I found that everyone could handle other trivial matters, but the only two tasks must be paid attention to by the emperor and the prime minister.

The first was the first population and cultivated land verification work after the Sanxing period of the Han Dynasty.

After all, the final battle with Cao Cao last year and at the beginning of this year only lasted for a few months, but the intensity was amazing. Cao Cao's deathly struggle was really too great.

After the battle, Yanyu and southern Xuzhou were destroyed again, which was witnessed by Liu Bei and Li Su. The population losses of Yanyu at each level of one million were already for sure, but they didn't know the specific numbers.

This year is tax exemption, so the population cannot be clearly seen from the head tax. But it was also taking advantage of this opportunity that Liu Bei asked local officials to take the opportunity to carefully verify the population. At the same time, he inspected the six states in Kanto, and he also considered this aspect.

The emperor personally inspected and rewarded those who had hidden people and directly concluded the case was very helpful for clarifying the hidden households. From this perspective, Liu Bei's Eastern Expedition to establish a new ruling order was not a waste of money and food.

Many things have begun to accumulate conflicts since the early stage of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and it is difficult to recover after a century of hard work. A war has to slightly destroy the original ruling system and the structure of the powerful families, and then rebuild it to completely cure them.

When Qin Shihuang was just unified in history, he made many Eastern tours, and made great contributions to the first time that Qin established the complete control of imperial power over the county level in the entire China and grasped population and land data. In this regard, the historical value of Qin Shihuang must be recognized.

Liu Bei's Eastern Tour this time has similar significance in the comprehensive population investigation.

Now Liu Bei has returned, but in the past six months, he encountered at least hundreds of cases of concealing population and concealing land and false reports. The civil servants who accompanied him were mainly Zhuge Jin's civil affairs officials and Fa Zheng's Ministry of Justice, who also concentrated on handling cases and handled many major cases.

All of this is an important guarantee for obtaining real population data by the end of this year and strengthening direct rule. It can also be regarded as the maximum utilization of the dividends brought by achieving final unification through force.

After all, if Cao Cao had not mobilized so wildly and led the men to fight the last battle, but had been reunited peacefully and Liu Bei did not have so many excuses to conduct a thorough investigation in the Eastern Tour, he would have to protect the original order in the local area and turn a blind eye.

This is easy to imagine. It is like when Sima Zhao dealt with Ji Han in history. Because Liu Chan finally surrendered, Sima Zhao basically recognized the population reported by Shu.

It is said that there are only more than 900,000 people in Shu, and the number of people in the future will be temporarily collected at more than 900,000. But in fact, the actual population of Shu during the Sima Zhao period was at least two or three million. At least two-thirds of them were hidden by the tone of "peaceful surrender, a harmonious mass" for the hidden households.

The arrangements of Liu Bei and Li Su were not in vain. During the tax-free period this year, the total population on the land of Dahan was finally checked, with only 28.2 million people remaining.

Compared with Li Su's previous years' estimate that "after achieving complete unification after the war is completed, there should be 30 million left", it is still a little less.

After all, when Yuan Shao died, the population in the world was estimated to be between 32 million and 33 million. Liu Bei once felt that in the years when he killed Cao Cao, he would have lost a total of about 2 million.

Cao Cao's mobilization was too ruthless, and the internal cleaning of Cao Cao's annexation of Yuan Shao's territory was too violent, and the division of land was too rough when equalizing the land, and the use of force was flooded, which were all important factors that led to excessive killings and plunging populations.

The final result was that during Cao's conquest, the population was killed by two million more.

Fortunately, all this ended, and although Cao Cao's atrocities must be condemned, they objectively defeated the land annexation conflicts accumulated by the six states of Guandong since the early stages of Eastern Hanzhong.

Especially in Hebei, because Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu started his career in Hebei, the Hebei powerful men have always been closely bound to the Eastern Han Dynasty's entrepreneurial warlord group, and there has been no reshuffle of land ownership since the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Although Cao Cao's bloody purge was to wash away Yuan Shao's family foundation and establish his own rule, Cao Cao actually only enjoyed the dividends for one year and was killed by Liu Bei before he could recover all the costs.

Therefore, although Liu Bei got Kanto, although the population was less than expected, most of the poor had land, which was very suitable for subsequent rest and recuperation.

Moreover, no matter how thorough Liu Bei's census was done, with the statistical technical level at that time, the hidden households would definitely not be completely cured. Therefore, it is estimated that the entire Han area had a book population of 28.2 million, and the actual total population could barely reach the 30 million mark.

Compared with more than 70 years later in history, when the Three Kingdoms ended, the country had only 16 million people (the official statistics were only more than 7 million when the war ended, and the hidden households were very serious. According to historians estimates, it should be around 16 million). That is more than half of them. Ensuring the stability of the Han rule and deterrence to the four barbarians is definitely enough.

...

After understanding the population verification matters clearly, the last important task this year is how to improve the set of "using a small number of long-term hereditary tax-free vouchers" that Li Su helped him think of during Liu Bei's Northern Tribunal to exchange for the group of nobles who had held a large number of war treasuries in the early days, and exchanged for tax-free vouchers by giving up bonds to reduce the financial pressure on the court to repay debts.

After all, the previous statistics have also been made that if you have to survive the post-war reconstruction tax exemption period, the total amount of government bond issuance of the imperial court will exceed 50 billion yuan, and the interest rate is 70 to 80 billion yuan. This burden is too heavy, and the risk resistance is very poor.

What Li Su was afraid of was not that the court was short of money, but that the credit system that the court finally established was shamed because of an accident in the middle.

After all, it is difficult to establish credit. It is easy for you to increase taxes when there is any disturbance. But your bonds will be quickly despised as Zhu Yuanzhang's "Da Ming Baochao" in later history. You cannot open evil examples at will.

After the Zhuge Liang family gave up 5 billion bonds, Li Su's family also took the lead in giving up part of it, and the Zhen family and Mi family operations,

The pressure on the principal of the court's total national debt has been reduced from 50 billion to about 35 billion, and the pressure has suddenly decreased by about 30%. The expected years for repaying the debt in the future will also be shortened by at least four or five years, or even longer.

Of course, the part that Li Su gave up was not for nothing, and part of it was also for his recent two waves of enthronement in counties.

Because in the last two years of Unification War, except for his conquest of Huainan, his other things were just siege and blockade. Strictly speaking, it was not enough to add two counties a year, so he really needed to raise some more money.

Of course, this nature cannot be called "buying a title", but it has long been "destroying family and alleviating difficulties". Now it is "giving up asking for debts", which will also block the evil examples of people directly using money to buy a title in the future.

You have to use your own money to help the court when the court is in trouble. The court has not come out later and has to reduce the exemption before it will be given a change of title.

This is like the difference between "equity conversion bonds" and "directly selling equity". It is definitely wrong to directly allow the sales of titles, which is equivalent to directly selling the shares of the imperial court.

The essence of selling "transfer bonds" is to issue bonds. If the debt cannot be repaid, the operator will actively replace the debt with equity as agreed. This cannot be said to be selling the stock directly. Because as long as he can afford it, you can only cash out the debt, take the money and leave, and cannot become a shareholder.

Moreover, considering that Li Su's number of counties enfeoffments is equal to the sum of Guan, Zhang and Zhao, giving up some bonds in order to reduce hatred is also a reduction of public suspicion. At the same time, the form of debt-to-equity conversion is not considered "inviting to buy reputation", and its effect on personal reputation is basically a positive or negative offset.

Finally, Li Su also participated in this matter appropriately, which could serve as a demonstration role, and at the same time, it made the behavior of Zhuge Liang's family not too abrupt, and it was also a kind of protection for Zhuge Liang.

After the system was designed, what Liu Bei and Liu Ba were most worried about was the impact of this "hereditary permanent tax exemption" on the long-term commercial tax sources of the court.

After all, this is equivalent to reducing the burden on the current financial pressure for 10 or 20 years, and giving future generations a long-lasting source of wealth.

Therefore, the design of types and details must be very cautious.

For this reason, Li Su and Zhuge Liang, two people who did not use the write-down of the government bonds for tax exemption (they exchanged for titles), helped Liu Bei with no psychological burden:

These inheritable permanent tax exemptions are best established in industries where technological progress is easier to achieve.

For example, if the Mi Zhu family gave up one billion this time, they could exchange them for "the hereditary permanent duty-free rights of 10,000 wide-frame cotton looms/breast looms."

Suppose that the annual industrial and commercial tax of a wide loom is 2,000 yuan, and 10,000 yuan is 20 million yuan in taxes every year. This is equivalent to a one-time investment by Mi Zhu's family, which requires fifty years of tax exemption to recover the capital.

In fact, if there is a stable financial system and bank interest in this era, investment like Mi Zhu will definitely not be cost-effective. The interest rate of one billion value-added is more than 2% every year, and even if it is permanently exempted from taxes, it is actually worth it.

But there is no strict concept of financial interest in this era. Although the interest rate of private lending is high, it is not something that someone is willing to borrow if you want to lend it. The court gives you permanent meal tickets and gives you the opportunity to permanently subscribe to "trust funds", which wealthy businessmen should still cherish.

However, one of the biggest considerations for Li Su and Zhuge Liang to set up permanent duty-free areas in the fields of looms, porcelain kilns, sugar factories, and steel factories is that Li Su and Zhuge Liang know that these fields can have relatively fast technological progress.

Perhaps in ten or twenty years, these industries will usher in explosive growth, and the application of new technologies will soar through production capacity several times. In another few decades, it may increase to dozens of times as high as it is today.

In this way, the tax exemption right to calculate the tax exemption based on the "production" actually has a problem of "depreciation" and "capacity inflation". After several generations, it will not be so valuable and will not affect the court's industrial and commercial tax sources too much.

Just like now, a hydraulic spinning machine has only thirty spindles. What if there are eighty or one hundred or even improved from other angles in the future and become more advanced?

What kind of machine is applicable to? The "Tax-free iron voucher" is written on it. Now you are given a thousand spinning machines with a 30-spin specification. If there is a new machine with a production efficiency equivalent to 30-spindles in the future, one machine will be worth ten of you now, then the tax-free right in the future will depreciate to "only one hundred new machines with tax-free power."

This is to use technological progress to hedge the tax source losses of industrial and commercial taxes. After the advancement of technology, the part of the industrial capacity exempted will not be that valuable.

In theory, Li Su and Zhuge Liang most hope that there will be rich people from aristocratic families who do not know science and technology to go to the "tax exemption for steel production",

Even if they get a tax exemption of 100 tons of steel per year, so what? It now accounts for a few percent of the annual output of the Han Dynasty, which seems to be huge. When metallurgy advances in the future, the production capacity of 100 tons of steel is nothing.
To be continued...