After Xue Fujiao said this, Gao Panlong also nodded: "Although it is said so, it is still rare. Throughout the ages, there is no emperor who can do not levy land taxes on the people."
"Really, even Yao and Shun could not reach it. From now on, no one dares to say that the Wanli Dynasty was harmful to the country and the people!"
then.
Xue Fujiao also echoed: "You are right! And since the court has exempted the land tax, I have asked my family to continue to use the farm to hire people to work, and let them waive the rent directly without having to use it. Come and start a workshop.”
"Why?"
Gao Panlong asked.
Xue Fujiao laughed and said: "The imperial government exempted land tax because it did not want local farming to be ruined and wanted to preserve the agricultural foundation!"
"In this case, our Xue family should respond to the court's call and continue to retain the farmland, instead of letting it lie idle rather than rent-free and sit back and watch as no one comes to farm it!"
"Anyway, these fields are in the countryside and cannot be used as factories. They can only grow grain or mulberry cotton. In some places, even planting mulberry cotton is considered too far from the town, so we just let people farm it for free. .”
Gao Panlong nodded after hearing this, and then couldn't help but smile:
“I never thought that so much land that our ancestors had managed honestly would one day become worthless even after the land tax was waived, and would need to be leased out without rent.”
"yes!"
"I didn't expect that Zhang Taiyue really succeeded in achieving great unity through His Majesty today."
Xue Fujiao said something more at this time, and then sighed: "If Gu Shushi was still alive, I wonder how he would feel after seeing this?"
"Luckily he didn't see it."
"Otherwise, he would be even more sad."
Gao Panlong replied with mixed feelings in his heart.
Like people from the landlord class such as Xue Fujiao and Gao Panlong, many landlords in the Ming Dynasty had mixed feelings about the imperial court's exemption of land tax.
Fortunately, the imperial court emphasized agriculture and directly exempted corvees and land taxes based on the "light corvee and thin taxation" advocated by Confucianism.
This is considered to have exceeded the Confucian ideal standard for a prosperous age, and is already considered a result of the age of great harmony. They cannot help but be educated by Confucianism and do not admit that this is indeed the realization of the ideal of a saint.
What makes them angry is that although the imperial court exempted them from land tax, they imposed a commercial tax. As a result, they did not get too much happiness from this thing that should have made all Confucian scholars happy, but they only felt that they were financially benefited. Instead, he lost money.
But in any case, the exemption of land tax has indeed led some landowners to start to deal with their fields by reducing land rents or directly exempting land rents, or even giving the fields to villagers at a low price, in order to earn as much income as possible through the land economy, and then Indirectly, it led to an increase in cultivated area.
At the same time, the exemption of land tax has also made many homesteaders no longer choose to work in the city or abandon farming, but choose to stay in their hometowns and continue farming.
Especially those old people who have been farming all their lives.
They are used to hard work and do not want to be idle. They do not realize how valuable their labor is. They can only do farm work and realize their pursuit of value by producing food. Therefore, most of them choose to stay in their hometowns because they are exempt from land tax. I continued to farm and did not choose to abandon farming because of the land tax.
Especially for Ming Dynasty farmers who came from military households, because of the high welfare security.
After being exempted from land tax, they hoped to continue farming more than other farmers.
After all, for military households, there are few places to spend money, and farming is currently the only way to increase income.
"Dad, you really don't want to go to the city with us?"
On this day, Gui Dacheng from Dongxiang County asked about his old father Gui Qijin on his farm.
Gui Qijin said: "I won't go! You have to buy everything to eat when you go to the city, and you don't have to pay the land tax. Why should I go when I'm so good at it? Why don't I grow some food while I'm still alive? A little?"
"In this way, I can also bring you some home-grown food and fruits, and you will spend less money to buy them."
"Fine."
"But don't plant too much. Don't be like last year, because Mr. Zhang's farmland had to be rented out for rent, so you went to rent it. As a result, you had so much farm work that you didn't have time to eat, and you got spleen and stomach problems."
Gui Dacheng couldn't stand up to his old father, so he only gave these few instructions.
But Gui Qijin didn't say anything and just continued digging in his land.
Gui Dacheng also returned to the city. When his wife Ming asked why his father still didn't come back to live in the city, he said:
"I'm afraid that if there is no one left in their generation, there will be no one willing to farm the land in their hometown. What's more, now that the court has waived land taxes, those who were originally willing to come to the city are no longer willing to go."
Mingshi only nodded after hearing this: "That's all!"
actually.
The imperial court's exemption from land tax not only allowed many rural households such as Gui Qijin to stay and continue farming in the countryside, it also made some people in the city prefer rural life or a quiet life or even prefer self-cultivation to the commodity economy life. Many people go to the countryside to rent or buy land for farming.
Especially some people who are literary and artistic at heart, now they do not pay land tax, but they like this kind of life of self-cultivation and self-production.
Anyway.
The exemption of land tax indeed made many local citizens of the Ming Dynasty still willing to choose farming, thus saving a lot of cultivated land, and also slowed down the degradation of cultivated land. It also prevented domestic grain production from increasing even if technology improved and cultivated land did not degrade too quickly. The decline is just that the growth rate has begun to slow down.
Since the domestic grain production in the Ming Dynasty was still increasing slowly, and more and more overseas grains were entering the Ming Dynasty, the local grain supply in the Ming Dynasty always exceeded the demand, which led to the low price of grain in the Wanli Dynasty.
In order to prevent the price of grain from being too low, the Ming Dynasty would even deliberately purchase some at a high price, and then resell it to overseas areas where famines occurred, and in turn made a fortune.
in addition.
Since the supply of local food in the Ming Dynasty has always exceeded demand, it also promoted the progress of the food industry.
Wine, milk drinks, condiments and other fermentation factories have appeared in large numbers, and even many famous food processing products have appeared. Famous wines and drinks are selling well at home and abroad. Things such as cola and soda have also appeared, and are known as more Exported at high prices.
This means that many overseas nobles basically consume high-quality and high-end food and drinks imported from Ming Dynasty.
Since Daming's industries were basically domestic, especially the high-precision industries, there was no need to import many processed products from outside, only raw materials and slaves.
As a result, many overseas businessmen continue to search for various minerals around the world.
Many Ming gold diggers, in pursuit of getting rich overnight, went crazy to explore new mining sites in new continents, hoping to make a quick buck before being discovered by Jin Yiwei.
As a result, adventurers from the Ming Dynasty began to cross Papua New Guinea in later generations through the Luzon Islands, and then arrived in Australia. They used firearms such as wind-chasing blunderbuss that they bought through various channels to force the native people here. People became their own slaves, and then allowed them to mine for themselves here. There were also private gold diggers who went to Africa, and because of the large number of germs they brought, these natives disappeared in large numbers.
At the same time, the Ming royal partners in the north continued to advance north and west.
Some royal partners have reached the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Chukotka Peninsula in later generations. They also ventured across the Bering Strait in later generations and arrived in Alaska in later generations. They declared that this place was also the private property of the Ming Emperor, and he was the only one here who was honored by the emperor. A military officer who rules here.
That's right.
Emperor Zhu Yijun of the Ming Dynasty granted the position of economic officer to all contractors who contracted his royal private property, including Saibei Economic Strategy, Mobei Economic Strategy, Shuobei Economic Strategy and so on.
These strategic officers all belong to the Shaofu system and are managed by the Shaofu.
However, although they are all strategic plans, some of them take the initiative to open up because the sky is high and the emperor is far away, so the areas covered by the strategic plans are very vast, while others are very narrow, but equivalent to a mansion in the mainland.
But Zhong Changdong, the strategic officer in the Yenisei River area, could not expand at this time. He was still surrounded by the Rakshasa army.
But because Zhong Changdong and the officers and soldiers under his command are all equipped with rifled cannons and muskets, and the city walls are made of concrete, plus there are arc lamps that can illuminate the night like day, so Rakshasa The country's 50,000-strong army surrounded Yanming City in the Ming Dynasty for one year and ten months but failed to capture Yanming City.
And in the early summer of the thirty-eighth year of Wanli.
When Li Rusong's army was about to arrive at Yanming City, Tsar Vasily IV of the Rakshasa Kingdom faced this situation and had to ask the returning commander Kopinshuisky:
"The main force of the Easterners is about to arrive. Can you capture their castle and kill all the Easterners in the Yenisei River before they arrive?"
Kopinshuiski put his palms on his chest and possessed him, and said with a depressed face:
"Reply Your Majesty, we really can't do it."
"Our army has been exhausted from being away from home and besieging the city for too long. Moreover, the firearms of these Easterners are indeed excellent. They can even be assisted by the bright little sun. It seems that gods are helping them and giving them many little suns. The sun is at night, so this also makes our army less confident, so although they only have a few hundred soldiers, we can't destroy them!"
"Now, I'm afraid it's impossible to surrender. Maybe we should negotiate with them, determine the boundaries, carve up this continent together, and see if they have the intention to continue to invade eastward." (End of Chapter)
