In the autumn of this year, his father-in-law Huang Ke died of illness, and Huang E quickly returned to his hometown to express his condolences. At the same time, on behalf of her husband, he visited his elderly and sick mentor Xi Shu.
Huang Ke and Xi Shu are both from Suining, Sichuan.
The young emperor Zhu Zaiyi was specially favored and sent a pedestrian (eighth grade) and twelve royal guards to escort him. The round trip expenses were all paid by the treasury.
This pedestrian also had another task, which was to help the emperor bring the epitaph. Huang Ke's epitaph was written by Luo Qinshun, the great Neo-Confucian master, and copied by the emperor Zhu Zaiyi himself.
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This move made those who opposed the reform tremble.
When Wang Yuan's father-in-law died, the emperor personally copied the epitaph, which shows how great the emperor's kindness was!
In the west of the city, Wangzhai, University Scholarship.
Wang Yuan had a banquet with his old friend Chang Lun. While drinking, they discussed the "One Whip Method".
Wang Yuan said: "All taxes and levies will be unified into one whip. In the future, the local government may send more."
Chang Lun smiled and said: "What is a whip? It means that all miscellaneous items are included. Since they have already been included, how can we add more items? Don't worry, the imperial court has issued a document not to add any more items."
Wang Yuan shook his head: "A hundred years from now, you and I will die, but the one-whip will still be popular in the world. At that time, the people in the world will only know one whip, but they will not know that one whip includes miscellaneous taxes. Officials and gentry will inevitably join forces to make profits and add some miscellaneous things out of thin air.
Apportionment, this is equivalent to two additional miscellaneous taxes being paid to the common people."
Chang Lun smiled suddenly, nodded and said, "It's very possible."
Wang Yuan said: "There is no law that lasts forever. It is not easy for us to reform and change the country for a hundred years. But we should still hold on to it. I will go to your majesty and ask for it to be announced in the name of the Ming Emperor after the whole country is cleared.
The world: The land in the prosperous age will never be taxed; the people in the prosperous age will never be levied."
"This method is acceptable," Chang Lun said happily, "Whoever adds more secretly in the future will violate the ancestral system of Emperor Shaofeng!"
Although the one-whip method does not spread the law across the land, its original intention is to reduce the burden on the common people.
That is to say, the total amount of taxes and duties remains unchanged, and the tax sources are increased and divided equally by counting the acres of land, and the taxes are divided among the counties, which can reduce the burden on individuals. At the same time, the land taxes, taxes and miscellaneous taxes are combined, and through a very complex calculation method
, knead it together and spread it out to everyone.
There are definitely countless problems with this approach, but it is more advanced than large households avoiding the labor force and leaving the entire burden to the common people. It can at least give the poor people a breather.
From now on, ordinary people will not have to spend all their money to do corvee work. All people will only pay the "one whip tax." Local corvee service is included in the tax. If officials want to do anything, the government will directly use money to hire people to complete it.
This also has two advantages:
First, liberate the labor force. Relaxing the constraints of land on population can better adapt to the development of the commodity economy and provide more workers for capitalists.
Second, reduce exploitation at all levels. In the past, to collect taxes and levies, the prefecture and county magistrates sent messengers, who then contacted the Lijia chief and the grain chief, who were responsible for collecting taxes directly.
Because the grain chiefs had to pay compensation, they had to make up for themselves if they couldn't collect all the grain. Many grain chiefs had their families ruined, and the grain chiefs who could still survive were all local bullies. The lijia chiefs also deteriorated, and the kind-hearted people simply couldn't work long, and all the grain chiefs who had survived the "survival of the fittest"
They are tigers and wolves.
After the implementation of the one-whip method, state and county officials directly communicated with the people, bypassing the lijia chief and grain chief, which was equivalent to reducing a layer of exploitation.
It is said that in ancient times, imperial power did not extend to counties. This was not the case at the time of Zhu Yuanzhang. The emperor could directly take charge of the villages. He relied on the Lijia chief and the grain chief. This was very progressive at the time, but by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it had become a bad government. The reason is
The landlord bureaucracy flourished, land annexation became serious, and the commodity economy prospered.
The system of Lijia chief and grain chief is no longer in line with the development of the times. Instead, it has become an old thing that hinders social fairness and progress.
Wang Yuan's statement that "the land in prosperous times will never be taxed; the people in prosperous times will never be taxed" is to wait until the country's land clearing is completed, based on new acres of land, fixed population as the basis, and combined with the past ten years of state and county statistics.
The average number of taxes and levies was used to formulate a local tax and levy quota according to the Whip Law.
That is, a state or county determines the total amount of taxes and levies required, and then distributes them equally to the landlords and ordinary people. The more acres of land and population in the local area, the less it will be distributed to everyone, and no increase will be allowed for generations to come.
!
It sounds like nonsense, which will lead to the failure of the court's tax revenue to increase even after the country becomes prosperous.
But a few facts must be clarified:
First, most of these taxes are local taxes, and central state taxes only account for a small part;
Second, given the urinary nature of bureaucratic landlords, even if the country continues to prosper, the tax revenue paid to the national treasury will not increase in the future, and may even continue to decrease.
For example, during the Zhu Yuanzhang period, compared with the late Zhengde period, the number of registered acres in the country was reduced by half, that is, half of the farmland that needed to pay taxes disappeared. However, the registered population in the country increased very slowly, and even decreased when famines and wars occurred. This resulted in,
As the Ming Dynasty developed for more than a hundred years, it became increasingly difficult for the central and local governments to collect taxes.
Wang Yuan shouted that he would never increase taxes, because he did not allow officials to assign taxes randomly, and it had nothing to do with fiscal revenue.
If one day, the Ming Dynasty is really about to die, it is estimated that it will not stick to any ancestral system, and it will have to increase the number of factions. Just like in history, Chongzhen crazily increased the "Liao salary", and the court did not care about the life and death of the people.
As the saying goes, there is no eternal solution.
Wang Yuan's reform can be regarded as a great success if it can maintain prosperity for fifty years. If it can consolidate the country for a hundred years, the reform can be regarded as very successful. If it can last for one hundred and fifty years, Wang Yuan will definitely be a generation that will go down in history.
A virtuous minister.
Land annexation cannot be stopped.
For those in power, the scary thing is not land annexation, but tax evasion by large landowners!
In the Jiangnan area at the end of the Ming Dynasty, 10% of the rich occupied 90% of the land, and there was no trouble. Even if there was a "Jiangnan slave rebellion", it was slaves fighting against their employers, not an uprising against the court. This is because of the prosperity of Jiangnan's commodity economy.
, can absorb a large number of landless farmers, and the farm skin and farm bones also maintain the stability of tenant farmers.
In Shaanxi, the commodity economy is fragile, and landless farmers cannot find a way out, and they have to supply border towns with military rations. In these poor places, even farmland has not been developed, and tenants and farmers are in danger. A natural disaster will cause a large number of refugees.
, so Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong appeared!
Wang Yuan said to Chang Lun: "After the tax and labor quotas are fixed, they will remain unchanged forever, and all taxes and taxes will be cancelled!"
Chang Lun was stunned.
One of Zhang Juzheng's whipping laws is that every year, the state and county calculate and set the total amount of taxes and levies, and then apportion them to the people within their jurisdiction. Officials can make arbitrary decisions on how much tax to pay. Although the censor will reveal the truth as soon as he checks it, there are always people who are greedy for money and not afraid of death.
Moreover, although taxes and duties were unified under one whip, the tax items were still retained. The retention of taxes was to facilitate the censor's verification, but it made the work of officials onerous. The government had to recruit more civil servants, and the work of transferring documents became very complicated.
.The further time went by, the more unwilling the censor was to check the accounts. The threshold set by Zhang Juzheng became a decoration, and its only function was to feed more officials.
This kind of approach cannot be sustained for even thirty years, let alone a hundred years, and it will definitely make the situation worse.
Wang Yuan was more rude and direct. According to the conditions of each state and county, he established a tax quota and canceled all miscellaneous items. Local officials would collect according to this fixed amount. It is equivalent to agricultural tax, head tax, and miscellaneous taxes. It will remain unchanged forever. Wang Yuan's goal is
Last for a hundred years.
As for a hundred years later, it will be up to the emperor and his ministers to find a solution, and it is none of Wang Yuan's business!
Zhang Juzheng was not so rude and formulated countless rules and regulations. The result? The more rules and regulations, the more loopholes. In the Ming Dynasty, there were fewer and fewer taxes and levies, and it became more and more difficult to collect. The burden on the people became heavier and heavier. In the end, they could only rely on increasing salt.
Taxes and crazy apportionments maintained the rule.