More than half a year later, Meng Shu still failed to join the Jishi Sect. His "Mathematics" barely reached the junior high school level. After all, he had learned addition, subtraction, multiplication and division before, so he was not a young child starting from scratch.
Unfortunately, Jishipai had already left Shandong and threw him a copy of "Physics" before leaving.
Meng Shu couldn't restrain his inner agitation, so he took the scribe's sword left behind by his grandfather and started traveling in a cotton-padded jacket.
After walking north for a few days, I met a group of farmers, dozens of people walking together.
It was winter now, and Meng Shu, adhering to the spirit of the Jishi School, went to inquire about the people's livelihood conditions in this county. Taking advantage of the farmers' collective pause to eat dry food, he stepped forward and clasped his fists, saying: "I am Meng Shu, a boy born in Qufu. I'm sorry to bother you all."
My father is old."
Most of these farmers were silent, looking at Meng Shu stupidly and smiling stupidly.
A middle-aged farmer cupped his fists and said: "Cui Youguang, a grassroots man, has met Mr. Meng."
Meng Shu waved his hand quickly: "I'm just a child, I don't dare to call you husband. Winter has arrived, and dozens of farmers are together. Are you going to serve?"
Cui Youguang smiled and said: "There is no need to serve in the army from now on. The government will use money to hire people to work."
"Do the common people know about this government?" Meng Shu asked in surprise.
Cui Youguang immediately started chatting and said excitedly: "The government notice was posted in the village school in our village. This matter has been spread throughout the village for a long time. The notice also said that in the future, whoever dares to recruit men for service will go to the county government office."
Complain. If the county magistrate doesn't care, go to the government office. If the magistrate doesn't care, go to the Chief Secretary. It is said that the people of Shandong are very lucky. We have met several great masters, and we will be very successful in the future."
In ancient times, farmers might never enter a county town, and the transmission of local information was in the hands of the gentry.
In order to implement the whip law smoothly, Gui E not only sent official documents to prefects in various places when announcing the tax rate per person or per mu, but also made it public in the form of notices.
The Chief Secretary's officers went out in all directions and posted the notices in government offices, temples, towns, warehouses, bank checkpoints, inns, ports, etc. They also asked the Chief Secretary (the academic and political officer is often the deputy envoy of the Chief Secretary) to post the notices.
Go to schools at all levels, and then the students in the schools will copy it back to their respective schools, and the rural schools will publish it.
Try to prevent people in remote areas from being deceived.
The one-whip method includes land tax, labor service, and miscellaneous taxes. Although the calculation method is very complicated, after calculating the annual coefficient, the taxes farmers pay are very simple. Even the village school teacher can easily calculate what everyone should pay based on the tax coefficient.
How much tax.
Meng Shu asked: "Then why are you doing this together?"
Cui Youguang smiled and said: "Let's accept autumn food."
Meng Shu said in surprise: "You took the initiative to send it to the county?"
In the past, when paying taxes, the field tax was handed over to the grain chief, and the labor and miscellaneous items were handed over to the lijia chief. The county only needed to go to the grain chief and the lijia chief to ask for it. During the tax season, tax collection was the same as urging orders, and there were no common people.
Something about paying taxes enthusiastically?
Cui Youguang said: "This year, the grain tax and tax are collected together. I heard that miscellaneous items will not be paid, so the spread is very small. Let's go to the county to see if it is really done like this. If it is really done like this, we will be very happy.
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Although the calculation of the one-whip method is complicated, the previous taxation was even more complicated.
There is one standard for land tax that remains unchanged, but there are so many different types of land taxes and miscellaneous items. Even state and county officials may not be able to figure it out, and ordinary people don't know how much tax they should pay. In this way, it is given to civil servants, civil servants, and local officials.
The commander-in-chief and the commander-in-chief of grain can take advantage of this opportunity to deceive the superiors and deceive the subordinates to randomly impose exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes on the people.
Ordinary people may be illiterate and unable to calculate the details of tax payment, but they are definitely not fools.
A whip tax notice was posted, and they asked someone to use an abacus to calculate it, and they knew that the taxes and levies to be paid this year were greatly reduced. The only thing they were worried about was that the government would go back on its promise and would have to allocate miscellaneous items indiscriminately in the future.
From now on, as long as the one-whip method is implemented for the censors in various places, the main job of the censors will be to see whether there are additional dispatches in the locality.
Once assigned, it is illegal, and the county magistrate will be evaluated as the worst. In serious cases, the prosecutor will take legal action.
Meng Shu asked again: "All taxes and servitude are converted into money. How can the common people come up with so much at once?"
Cui Youguang said: "Those who grow cotton will definitely be able to get it. There are people rushing to harvest cotton, and the price will not be lowered. It's hard to say those who grow grain. The price of new grain is always lowered. The better the harvest, the harder the price will be."
Meng Shu said: "The cheap grain hurts the farmers."
Cui Youguang said: "Yes, that's the truth. But it's not bad. As long as the family is not in trouble, we can still collect tax money."
There is really no way to do this. The imperial court changed the tax collection in kind to silver dollars and copper coins. The purpose was to reduce the transportation cost of physical taxation and reduce the tax pressure on the people. But the people had to convert food into money, and it was all up to the merchants to collect the food. The merchants would inevitably
Take the opportunity to lower the price.
In New China, grain stations were spread to the township level, and farmers directly handed over grain to the state. However, it was difficult to implement in the Ming Dynasty. If every township had a grain station, I don't know how many borers would breed.
Fortunately, Wang Yuan used steam engines to cast silver coins and copper coins more than ten years in advance. There was also overseas supply of silver and copper materials, and there was enough private money in circulation. Unlike Zhang Juzheng's reforms, copper coins were chaotic and could not be priced, so they could only collect silver. Silver
It was not custom-made, and the local government had to melt the scattered silver into silver ingots. As a result, the weird thing called "Huo Hao" was born.
Wang Yuan's whipping method has no fire consumption and requires either silver dollars or copper coins.
With the inflow of large amounts of overseas gold, silver, and copper materials, the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Industry relied on steam engines to mint coins. The more money they printed, the more money they made. The relevant agencies were simply going crazy and wanted their machines to run around the clock.
Not afraid of inflation, landlords and wealthy people like to hide money. They are natural reservoirs for additional currency issuance.
Nowadays, there are still many rich households who store silver coins, but those who store copper coins have disappeared. No matter how exquisite the official money is, it has no collection value. Therefore, good coins finally drive out bad coins, because bad coins cannot be used to pay taxes. Before the Zhengde Dynasty,
All types of copper coins were rejected.
Anyway, in prefectures, counties and cities, the people only accept Zhengde Tongbao, and bad money is circulated to remote mountain villages. Gradually, farmers have learned better, and bad money can only deceive people in the mountains.
There must be people at the bottom paying the bill. Many farmers couldn't spend the bad money in their hands. While cursing, they simply used it to make feather shuttlecocks for children.
National recycling?
Stop talking nonsense, how much trouble will be caused, the profiteers will probably wake up laughing in their sleep.
Nowadays, all small-amount transactions in the private sector use Zhengde Tongbao, and no one will accept any scraps of silver. For larger amounts, Zhengde Yuanbao is used, and silver coins have become the favorite of people all over the world.
Fake money has temporarily lost its living space, because the quality of real money is so good that it can be recognized at a glance.
If you rely on traditional crafts to mint coins, you will lose as much as you make. You can only make money by using steam engines.
But even if someone could imitate a steam engine, it would be difficult to produce a complete set of steam coinage equipment. Even if a complete set of coinage equipment could be produced, the cost would be very high, and large-scale coinage would be required to recover the cost, so raw materials would be another headache.
Meng Shu followed these farmers to Changqing County Government.
I saw that at the gate of the county government office, there were so many people paying taxes that there was even a scalper gang that openly sold the queue numbers.
The household clerks set a table in the front hall, and the farmers reported their household registrations. The clerks immediately looked through the yellow book and the fish scale album, and calculated the taxes through the two newly formulated books.
The farmers took out official money to pay taxes, and the officials filled out two tax stamps. After the farmers pressed their fingerprints, the government kept one tax stamp and the farmer took away the other. The tax money was thrown into the bank next to it.
Luokung is supervised by the county magistrate or dianbo of the county.
As for the county magistrate, he looked sad because there was a fatal flaw in the whipping method.
What should farmers do who are in arrears with taxes?
In the past, the government did not directly communicate with the people, but relied entirely on the lijia chief and the grain chief. To collect all the taxes, they would only go to the lijia chief and the grain chief. As for how these grassroots tax collections were made, state and county officials would not take care of them.
Even if the lijia chief and the grain chief arbitrarily allocate money and ruin the lives of the people, the county magistrate would not bother to interfere in order to collect taxes.
But now that the grassroots level is being bypassed, the lijia chief and the grain chief no longer have to pay compensation, and the county magistrate cannot press them. He can only send his own servants to the countryside to collect taxes from door to door. The workload has greatly increased, and it may not be possible to press them.
If you really meet someone who has no money, you will lose everything and have no money, and even if you force them to death, you won’t be able to get them all!
If state and county officials want to collect as much tax as possible, they must try to increase the number of acres of taxable land and increase the number of people who pay tax, so as to prevent the number of acres and population from being hidden. When the tax base increases and is apportioned, the tax amount per person and per acre will become smaller.
Yes, it doesn't hurt that some people default on their taxes.
Alas, it is really difficult for Wang Yuan to be the chief assistant and a local official.
But the people were happy because the exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes were wiped out, and the grain chief and the lijia chief could no longer arbitrarily apportion the taxes.
Meng Shu couldn't help but smile when he saw the happy scene of all the people, but the smile soon disappeared because there was a commotion in the front hall of the county government office.
A commoner cried: "Masters, my father has been dead for six years and my mother has been dead for two years. Why do they have to pay taxes for being ghosts? This is unreasonable!"
The county clerk said expressionlessly: "If there is no outline in the yellow book, your parents are not dead."
The young man said, "He is really dead. He is buried at the east end of the village. If you don't believe me, I will take you to see him."
The county chief registrar sneered: "Who knows if they are hiding? You randomly identified two graves as your parents?"
The young man howled: "How could I curse my parents to die? The eldest master is the one who makes the decision, the eldest master is the one who makes the decision!"
The county chief registrar ordered: "Come here and drive this unruly citizen out!"
No matter how good the policy is, there are loopholes that can be exploited. As soon as the whipping method was implemented, chaos has already begun.
I am afraid that in the future, not only will the population of the Ming Dynasty grow wildly, but there will also be countless zombie households. Even if only one person in your family dies, the government will not cancel the yellow registration. You will still have to pay taxes if you are a ghost in the Ming Dynasty.
It doesn't matter if the court investigates, they can just push out the civil servants from the county Yamen Section and use them as scapegoats.
In anger, Meng Shu reached out and pressed the hilt of his sword, wanting to stand up and fight against the injustice. However, he quickly let go of his hand and rode straight to Jinan. He wanted to tell the chief envoy about the situation.
If you cannot come up with a countermeasure, a whipping method is likely to fail.