After a cup of tea.

"Scattered."

With Ji Boying's faint words, the holographic projection was turned off instantly.

Phew~!

In the main hall of Zuixian Building, the emperor and princes sitting in these seats all immediately returned to their original expressions, but all of them were gritting their teeth and showing extreme hatred in their eyes.

In just half a cup of tea, they fully understood how a low-level citizen was oppressed by low-level officials.

Only Lao Zhu looked calm, with a hint of emotion between his brows.

The first visual experience he had just now reminded him of his childhood, when his parents were forced to be beaten by the police because they could not pay taxes, and he flashed back in his mind.

"I must kill these two officers!"

Old Zhu Di punched the table with his fist, gritted his teeth, and shouted sternly.

He has never felt anything like this in his life.

"Dad, it was an illusion just now, I couldn't kill you..."

Next to him, Fatty Yongle reminded him softly.

Old Zhu Di looked stunned, then took a deep breath.

The mixed emotions of powerlessness, humiliation, unwillingness, and anger just now rushed into his heart. This experience was so real that it made him forget where he was for a moment, and he almost thought that he was really that poor commoner.

.

The same is true for other emperors and princes, their chests are rising and falling, obviously they haven't recovered yet.

"Do you understand?"

Ji Boying swept across these emperors and princes.

Just now, they used their first sight to put themselves into the situation of the servant, and fully experienced all the physical sensations and emotions of the servant.

"Jia San, tell me how you feel."

Ji Boying glanced at Xiao Zhusi.

"I want to rebel!"

Xiao Zhusi spoke fiercely, his eyes actually showing hatred for the imperial court.

Abiao took a deep breath and stood up.

"Master Immortal, I understand."

"For the common people to serve, their service will only end if they are recognized by the government. As long as the government does not approve it, the common people will have to continue to serve, endlessly, and even eventually die from exhaustion."

"And the way to get the government to approve the completion of corvee work, I think, is to bribe money."

As soon as he said this, the other emperors and princes remained silent. They had just detected the servant's mind.

How can a farmer's family, which can't even provide brown rice for a family meal, get the money to bribe officials?

In this case, apart from becoming a refugee, the only other option is to hang yourself. It is really better to die than to live.

"We must kill these bunch of dog-skinned flies! Skin them and turn them into grass!"

Lao Zhu's face was full of anger, and he slapped the armrest of the Grand Master's chair with a fierce look in his eyes.

"How many people can you skin?"

Ji Boying looked at Lao Zhu.

This question made Lao Zhu speechless for a moment.

The oppression of the common people by petty officials occurs all the time.

Unlike the corruption of the powerful in the temple, it covers the entire Ming Dynasty. It is easy to kill the officials in the temple, but it is too difficult to kill all the petty officials in the entire Ming Dynasty.

Tigers are easy to kill, but flies are difficult to fight;

The king of hell is easy to meet, but the devil is difficult to deal with.

This is true regardless of the feudal dynasty or later generations.

Ji Boying glanced at the group of emperors and princes, and said.

"Just because the people cannot support themselves by farming on their own, it is better to give the land to the local gentry. When the powerful gentry accepts the land from the farmer, he needs the farmer to work for him and earn rent for him."

"With the power of the gentry and the powerful, the local officials naturally dare not make things difficult. After all, delaying the farming of these tenants is tantamount to harming the interests of this group of gentry."

"Or to be more precise, these petty officials were instructed by the gentry to oppress these farmers and force them to donate their fields."

"In this cycle, the road of land annexation by the powerful and gentry has become a closed loop."

"This is the core of surrendering into slavery."

"What the people are escaping from is not heavy taxes, but hard labor, and hard labor is worse than taxes."

Boom...!

‘Hard labor is worse than taxes’!

These five words rang in the hearts of all the emperors and princes.

There is one thing that needs to be mentioned in particular.

In many readings popularizing land annexation in the Ming Dynasty, it is stated that the gentry in the middle and late period are exempt from tax. In fact, this statement is wrong.

From the founding of the Ming Dynasty to its demise, the imperial court had never promulgated a tax exemption system for the gentry. The gentry were exempted from serving as slaves and only had a certain amount of tax exemptions, and this amount of exemptions and exemptions increased with each new generation.
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For example, in the Jiajing Dynasty, the first-grade official in the capital was exempted from rations of 30 dan and the population was 30 ding, and the following decreases in descending order, up to the 9th-grade official who was exempted from rations of 6 shi and the population of 6 ding; foreign officials were reduced by half; officials in promotion, supervision, and birth were exempted

Two stones of grain, two people of ding; if you become an official, you will be exempted from seven tenths of this product.

In the Wanli Dynasty, the preferential exemption quota for gentry was further increased. The current Jiake Jingguan was exempted from 10,000 acres of land for the first rank, and the following was reduced gradually. The eighth rank was exempted from 2,700 acres of land; the foreign official was halved; the official was exempted from six-tenths of the same rank;

The maximum number of acres of land that can be exempted for those who have not yet entered the imperial examination is 3,350 acres; for those who have not yet been promoted to official positions, the land that is exempted is 1,200 acres; for those who have not yet been promoted to official positions, the land that is exempted is 80 acres.

The common people donated land to the gentry and powerful people, mainly to rely on the power of the gentry to avoid being oppressed by the endless apportionment of corvee.

As for the reduction of imperial tax revenue.

This is also easy to understand.

After these gentry and powerful people have used up their quota of concessions, the remaining land can be used as long as it is not on the fish scale book.

After all, this preferential exemption amount is too low. A Beijing official has a rank of 10,000 acres, which is one hundred hectares of farmland. However, Mr. Xu Jie and Xu Ge had more than 20,000 hectares of land under his name back then, so it is not even a fraction.

When the Fish Scale Register was created in the early Ming Dynasty, there were approximately 8 million hectares of arable land in the country.

By the fifteenth year of Hongzhi's reign, even if some uncultivated fields were added over the past hundred years, the number of registered fields had been reduced by half, to only more than 4 million hectares.

In this land where the blood of Yan and Huang flows, officials protect each other and collusion of interests is an eternal tradition.

"Brother, what can we do to allow the people to work independently and no longer be oppressed by the powerful and annexed by the powerful?"

Lao Zhu frowned tightly.

He was originally a civilian from Huaiyou and came from a humble age.

After Lao Zhu ascended the throne, one of his administrative goals was to ensure that all people in the world had land to farm and could afford to eat. He treated officials even more harshly, because he did not want officials to oppress the people again in the Ming Dynasty he created.

Tragedy.

Therefore, in the Hongwu Dynasty, all the officials wished that the emperor would send it earlier, but the common people were extremely supportive of the emperor.

But Lao Zhu never thought of it.

The Ming Dynasty under his rule, after just over a hundred years, would turn into what he hates the most. How is this endless hard labor different from the former Yuan Dynasty, which will tax taxes fifty years later?!

Lao Zhu's sharp gaze swept across these emperors in the mid-Ming Dynasty.

The emperors in office in the mid-Ming Dynasty all had evasive eyes and did not dare to look directly at Lao Zhu.

"Do you still remember the illusion I took you to see when you were able to pass the Dharma exam?"

The words fell.

Abiao's eyes suddenly lit up, and he remembered what was written on the rice paper that day. He had even memorized some of the important ones that day. This is the memory of a top student.

"One whip!"

"Integrate corvee service and various taxes into the Spring and Autumn Period taxes, and pay them all in silver. This will prevent the people from being squeezed by petty officials. How wonderful!"

The emperors and princes in the first issue all had stunned expressions, recalling the content of the tax reform written on rice paper that day.

As A Biao said in this passage, the core point of a whipping method is to unify a series of miscellaneous taxes and corvees into taxes paid in money.

But the whip law also has its limitations. When Zhang Juzheng formulated this whip law, he had many loopholes in the whip law because he needed to compromise with the powerful, so that these powerful people could continue to take advantage of the loopholes to make money.

The students in the second period were confused. They didn't know what this 'one whip method' meant.

‘The Immortal Master is indeed an Immortal Master, and every word and deed has deep meaning.’

Just when everyone was sighing at the mystery of the Immortal Master, Ji Boying's voice sounded.
To be continued...