Eight hundred and ninetieth chapters super railway
The financial budget system of the Tang Dynasty had already established such a pattern from the beginning of its implementation. At the beginning of the year, the budget for the current year was basically allocated.
Where to spend money and how much to spend have already been determined.
Even though there will be some emergency funds left in addition to the expenditure budget, it is not that difficult to get this part of the emergency funds.
Because since it is an emergency fund, it means that the money can only be used for emergency relief. For example, if there is a sudden and unexpected war, temporary war expenses need to be allocated temporarily, or if a certain place is hit by a disaster, it needs to be temporarily allocated.
Disaster relief.
It is absolutely impossible to obtain emergency funds for ordinary financial expenditures. Even last year, that is, the fifth year of Xuanping, the emergency funds of more than one million taels left were not used for military expenditures, but for military expenditures.
Used for disaster relief and restoring people's livelihood.
But various departments and even the military are short of money!
So they will focus on extra-budgetary income!
This part of the extra-budgetary income is actually the profits of state-owned enterprises, the proceeds from war seizures and confiscation of criminals. Although the profits of state-owned enterprises are not large, the seizures and seizures are quite a lot.
Because the Tang Dynasty is currently undergoing rapid external expansion, state-owned enterprises are almost exclusively defense enterprises related to national security. In order to meet the needs of national security, they have been undergoing large-scale expansion. Therefore, although these state-owned enterprises are profitable
, but they are basically invested in scale expansion. Even after they are turned over to the national treasury, they are earmarked and will still be invested in the expansion of state-owned enterprises in the future.
But war seizures and criminal seizures are different. There are quite a lot of trophies seized in wars. In addition to some military supplies, some gold and silver and other cash in government warehouses and other types of materials are all trophies.
When it comes to criminal searches, the main targets are not ordinary gentry and businessmen, but mostly the families of pseudo-Ming vassal kings and pseudo-Ming officials.
To be honest, it was the first time for the Tang Dynasty to raid such wealthy groups as Yangzhou salt merchants.
When I heard that the Tax Department had seized more than 40 million yuan in various assets in Jiangbei Province, of which more than 10 million yuan in cash alone, the ministers of various cabinet departments and the military generals could not sit still.
, they all rushed to Li Xuan in a swarm, fearing that others would snatch them all away if they arrived too late.
Listening to the group of people below complaining and crying about poverty, Li Xuan felt depressed!
The Ministry of Rites said that the government-run primary schools and middle schools are now in urgent need of funds. In order to prepare the schools, the Ministry of Rites has even diverted a lot of funds to prepare for the provincial and provincial examinations this fall. If no other method is found, the provincial examinations this fall will be postponed.
The Ministry of Industry, whose powers have been greatly reduced after being split up, also said that the flood control situation of the Yangtze River and Yellow River this year is extremely pessimistic, and funds are urgently needed to repair river embankments and dredge river channels. It also said that the official roads in many places are old and dilapidated.
, even if it has been abandoned for a long time, funds are still needed to rebuild the official road.
Perhaps because they felt that this was not convincing enough, people from the Ministry of Industry suggested that they were already studying the promotion of railways and trying to build a line connecting the iron ore mining area and Jiangnan Iron and Steel Company in more areas, especially in the Dangtu area.
Jiangnan Arms Company, railway at Dangtu Pier.
The preliminary plan is only about 25 kilometers in length, and the construction cost is one million taels of silver!
Then he talked about how he wanted to build a super-large railway from Jinling City to Youzhou, with a total mileage of more than 1,000 kilometers. He asked for 50 million taels of silver. Why not take the money from the Yangzhou salt merchants this time?
Although the money is still not enough to build the railway, more than 10 million taels are enough to start the preliminary construction.
When people in other departments heard this, they all couldn't help but take a breath of cold air and feel numb. Even if we ask for money, we can only get hundreds of thousands or millions of taels of silver at most, and this is still all over the sky.
Asking for a price and paying back on arrival, I had no hope of getting so much.
You people from the Ministry of Industry are so crazy that you can get 50 million taels of silver out of your mouth. More than 10 million taels of silver is just an initial investment!
Regarding the words of the Ministry of Industry, Li Xuan listened to a few words about water conservancy and official roads, but he selectively ignored the latter about the railway!
Building railways is too expensive, and the amount of steel required is not ordinary. More importantly, the current steam engine technology is not yet perfect, and it is far from being able to pull trains.
It is possible to build railways now, but at most we can build some short-term lines of a few kilometers or more than ten kilometers, which can be barely used by horses. As for the thousands of kilometers of north-south arteries, we will wait for the development of train technology.
On the other hand, the request made by the Tax Department is quite reasonable. The Tax Department requested additional funds to increase the number of tax investigators. Although the Tax Department is Datang's pocketbook, it is not usually short of money, but at this critical moment,
, still will not forget to benefit his own department.
Li Xuan thought that if you give up, you will gain. Without enough tax funds, you cannot collect enough taxes, so although he hasn't said anything yet, he has already agreed in his heart that the tax department's funds can be increased appropriately.
With more manpower, especially more tax investigators, it will be easier to collect taxes.
Various departments in the cabinet were not left behind, and they all expressed their own reasons.
The generals in the military, whether they were the navy, the army, or the generals of the Guards, had a tacit understanding and did not speak!
After the people inside were talking dry, a group of generals finally spoke. The first person to speak was not Lei Wan and other powerful generals, but Zeng Ziwen.
Although Zeng Ziwen no longer holds the powerful position of Minister of Operations, he is still an active lieutenant general of the Tang Dynasty Army and serves as deputy envoy to the Privy Council. He has become the highest-ranking general in the Tang Dynasty. At the same time, he is also the military instructor of the prince and the emperor.
The minister who walks in the study room and the marquis of the Tang Dynasty.
Even though he no longer held a position of real power, he still frequently visited the Imperial Study Room. This time he went north, and he also went north with him.
Just listen to Zeng Ziwen say: "Your Majesty, the Northern War is still going on, and the rear is in urgent need of troops to suppress the area. The army imagines that it is really unsustainable now. General Fang, who is marching westward to Henan, wrote a letter a few days ago
, said that the Fourth Army is now in a very difficult situation, almost struggling, wishing to use one person as ten people. Once they continue to march to Shanxi and Shaanxi, even if the officers and soldiers of the Fourth Army are extremely loyal and brave, they may not be able to
Let’s continue!”
Just listen to him continue: "Nowadays, in the rear provinces, there is basically only one mixed regiment garrisoned in each province, and many of the newly established mixed regiments still have insufficient strength and equipment, and are simply unable to maintain the suppression mission of such a large province, and the militiamen in various places still have
There is no system. If you want to completely maintain the stability of each province, each province must have at least one infantry division garrisoned!"
"Judging from the current situation, the Army needs at least fifty divisions to barely maintain the situation across the country!"
Zeng Ziwen did not talk about the issue of military expenditure, but said that the number of troops was small!
But the amount of troops is directly related to the amount of military expenditures, and these generals know this, and Li Xuan also knows it.
However, although what Zeng Ziwen said was a bit exaggerated, it generally stated the actual difficulties existing in the Tang Dynasty, that is, the regular army had too few troops, and although militia organizations were easy to use, they were not yet established in many areas, making it difficult to serve as
heavy responsibility.
But even if Zeng Ziwen said so, it was impossible for Li Xuan to directly prepare fifty divisions according to Zeng Ziwen's words. That would be too nonsense.
One division can cost at least 1.5 million taels of silver every year. Fifty divisions? That’s 75 million taels!
It is impossible for the Tang Dynasty to spend so much money to maintain such a large regular army. Otherwise, why would Li Xuan focus on setting up a militia organization? It is not because the militia organization costs less and can barely be used.
.
In the militia system of the Tang Dynasty, it was planned to form a militia organization with retired soldiers and some local young adults. In normal times, everyone should do what they were supposed to do. They would train during the off-season, and they would be given some subsidies during the training. When something happened,
When the time comes, they can be directly recruited and used.
What they value is nothing more than being able to maintain a relatively large number of militiamen with a small number of military training without spending much money.
At a later stage, Li Xuan will prepare to establish a reserve force, using retired soldiers as the second-line force. They usually only maintain the most basic framework and train for a period of time a year. Then when encountering a battlefield, they will be directly recruited and pulled out to fight.
And these plans are all to supplement the shortage of regular troops!
Due to the huge cost of maintaining a regular army, it is impossible to maintain an extremely large-scale regular army. We can only find ways from other aspects.
But now, the military strength is indeed insufficient. Now that we have money, we still need to expand the army, but it is not possible to expand it as much as Zeng Ziwen said. At most, it will only be a few divisions.
In fact, based on the current financial income of the Tang Dynasty, it is already very difficult to support the current more than 200,000 regular troops. If there are more, it will really lead to financial bankruptcy.
Since the army is expanding, the navy is no exception. This time, the navy did not cry out for poverty. It directly gave Li Xuan a three-year fleet development plan. This fleet development plan said a lot, and there was a lot of banging. You can read it.
Li Xuan has a headache.
Its core is nothing more than two points: ship building and port repair!