"In this case, it will affect the Western countries who come to our Ming Dynasty for trade. Their income will decrease as a result, but they are exchanging gold and silver directly stolen from places like America and Africa, and it is not their own hard work. Naturally, they won’t feel any pain when they spend what they earn, and it is feasible to raise taxes on them.”
Zhu Youxiao said: "That's right! You should come up with a specific tax increase plan immediately."
"According to the order!"
Bi Ziyan replied.
If the Ming Dynasty wanted to maintain its hegemony without damaging the powerful gentry at home, it could only inevitably plunder other countries.
Fortunately, the important ministers who now assist Emperor Zhu Youxiao are more experienced than the previous ministers. They already know what to do and do not need the emperor's instruction.
Bi Ziyan was even the most active minister among them in doing so.
Because he could no longer convince himself to believe that Ming Dynasty would continue to prosper if he treated foreigners with kindness as before.
After staying with Zhu Youxiao for a long time because he was good at making money, he gradually understood that the Ming Dynasty was as strong and wealthy as it is now, all by earning foreign trade and plundering foreign profits.
Otherwise, Ming Dynasty would have died long ago due to increasingly complex internal problems.
"My wise emperor, when he came to the throne, disregarded all resistance, rectified internal affairs, and developed science and technology. Only then did he control the world today! Otherwise, I am afraid that we, the scholar-bureaucrats, would have lived half of their lives and half of their lives."
Therefore, after Bi Ziyan returned to the political hall, he said this to the two auxiliary ministers Liu Hongxun and Zhu Xieyuan because he mentioned that the Ming Dynasty could now transfer economic pressure to foreign barbarians.
"There may be many martyrs, but half of them are just difficult. Judging from my experience, we scholar-bureaucrats have never realized how important it is to put national interests first, and most of them just put the interests of the clan first, or are willing to sacrifice their families. To be honest, there are not many people who are loyal to the Ming Dynasty."
Liu Hongxun replied.
"No matter how many or how little, now we scholar-officials have begun to change, especially you and me who are still standing in the court, and more and more of us have begun to put the interests of the Han family first, it is undoubtedly the result of His Majesty, and His Majesty ascended the throne At the beginning, not many people understood that even Fang Daxing was forced to go up against all the unreasonable scholar-bureaucrats."
Zhu Xieyuan said with a smile at this time.
"This is reasonable. Your Majesty's knowledge is always ahead of us. Even I, Bi Zichuan, did not realize that magic and skill are so important to the prosperity of the country. It can be seen that the Neo-Confucianists say that cultivating virtue can make the world peaceful. It's useless. In the end, the food and broken silver brought by the miraculous skills are reliable! The troubles of the Eastern captives, the chaos of She'an in the southwest, the Mongolian troubles, and the Japanese rebellion have all disappeared now, all due to this merit. "
Bi Ziyan said.
When he said this, Bi Ziyan couldn't help but look solemn, and said: "But the emphasis on strange skills and tricks has also brought many hidden dangers. I wonder if you have ever thought about it. Once the foreigners are really so hungry and cold, and If we become poorer and poorer and cannot consume our materials, then how can we replace the more and more cheap goods brought by various new machines with other materials that are useful to us, such as grain and ore?"
After Liu Hongxun and Zhu Xieyuan heard what Bi Ziyan said, they couldn't help but look at each other.
"After all, it's Yuan Fu who sees further than we do. This is indeed a problem. Once there is a backlog of goods, the consequences will be disastrous. Not to mention that all kinds of loans cannot be collected, money will be tight, and I am afraid that many employees will lose their jobs! The young people in Ming Dynasty are already having a hard time due to the large number of old people and children. They rely on the continuous increase in income to prevent them from being dissatisfied. However, once foreign trade is cut off and internal consumption of so many goods is not possible, then these young people will probably die. Something will happen."
Liu Hongxun spoke first.
Zhu Xieyuan asked Bi Ziyan directly: "Does Yuan Fu have any ideas?"
"Essentially, the total amount of money and food in the world has increased. It is necessary to spread the benefits appropriately, but this spillover cannot be in vain. The money must be used to achieve certain purposes, such as making it accept our Han culture. In addition, the official The share of business cannot be reduced, but must be increased. Private money banks must be banned, and illegal coining of silver and money must be strictly investigated, so that most of the money and food in the world are controlled by the imperial court. The imperial court will then take this opportunity to continue to build railways and cities, and use the excess money. Money is distributed to more people, leaving most people in the Ming Dynasty with more money. At the same time, consumption, especially luxury consumption, is encouraged. The people of the Ming Dynasty need to be extravagant and everyone needs to own luxury houses and horses in order to avoid Product backlog!”
Bi Ziyan said.
"In other words, we should go against the past norm of advocating frugality and allow extravagance to prevail?"
Liu Hongxun asked.
"It has to be like this! The Ming Dynasty is no longer what it used to be. In the past, we had to be frugal to avoid having to eat too much food. But now we have to let more goods circulate. This requires people to be willing to buy all kinds of things. There are only so many things that people need. If there are too many, we have to let them buy things they don’t need, such as new perfume, mink coats, ginseng and deer antlers, etc.”
Bi Ziyan continued: "In addition, etiquette and laws must continue to be lifted, allowing women and children to show their faces, buy all kinds of expensive powders and spices to decorate themselves, and even improve the status of Han women and let their husbands serve them for them." Spend more money."
"If you do this, you really have to change the customs."
Liu Hongxun said.
"Today's Ming Dynasty is no longer the Ming Dynasty of the past. If we don't do this, there will be chaos! In other words, in the past we only asked the people of the Han family to have enough food, but now we have to ask the people of the Han family to live a refined life and pay attention to taste like us scholar-bureaucrats. , pay attention to luxury and elegance! Otherwise, what you will get in exchange is a large number of closed factories, a large number of unemployed workers, and dwindling tax revenue!"
"In addition, all gentlemen should know that due to advocating thrift for thousands of years, the people of Ming Dynasty love to save money. The savings of Ming Bank remain high. In recent years, in order to encourage people to leave the country, many interest-free loans have been added. , the current profits of the Ming Dynasty Bank are not from the common people, but the income brought by various government-owned company loans, and these government-owned company loans are actually to plunder more wealth from overseas. It can be seen that the consumption of our Han people has always been It’s not exciting, but if it’s not exciting, how can the foreigners alone consume our goods?”
Bi Ziyan continued: "If necessary, the admission qualifications, medical opportunities, and convenient transportation must be linked to the size and price of the house to be purchased. Government-run hospitals and academies should be reorganized into buildings with various third-level and fourth-level medical facilities." If you want to see a famous doctor or study in a good academies around the luxury houses of the 1st and 5th tier, you must buy a big house! If you can't afford it, you can buy it with a loan and pay it back slowly."
"If this continues, if we can't control it, will it be counterproductive and force the people of the world to eat their bread? How will we deal with a natural or man-made disaster?"
Liu Hongxun asked.
"How can I just mention it? If you want to do this, you will naturally have to have many new systems. For example, the imperial court can do things like saving food and money to deal with natural and man-made disasters."
Bi Ziyan said.
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