There were continuous battles on land and sea in Korea, but the capital of the Ming Dynasty was in peace. At least on the surface, the war in the vassal country seemed to have nothing to do with itself.
Under this situation, the newly promoted Dongge University scholar, Gao Jingshi, seems to have paid special attention to "civil governance" recently, approving the rewards for the war against Yuan Dynasty, and checking the remaining annual royal stipends that need to be spent after the vassal ban, etc. , in short, very busy.
The reward for the Battle of Fayuan was actually easy to handle, because he had been accumulating money for this matter in the past few years. In addition, although Gao Pragmatic sent a large number of troops to this battle, it only lasted for a few months. After all the expenses were summarized, there was no reward. If it does not exceed expectations, there will be no embarrassment of patching things together and making ends meet.
What's more, now that the Federal Reserve exists, some of the so-called "liquidity release" measures in later economics can keep up. This greatly alleviates the possible distress caused by sudden cash expenditures and ensures the stability of central finance. In fact, This means stabilizing the overall situation of the country.
No matter how much you dislike the pragmatic courtiers, you still have to be convinced of him when it comes to financial management, especially those veterans who have experienced the Jiajing Dynasty. Everyone knows how poor the central court was back then.
What now? After fighting a war that deployed more than 600,000 troops and lasted for several months, the Ministry of Revenue actually dared to say that "the treasury can support 100,000 troops to fight in Korea for more than a year" - you know, the Boshu Rebellion in the southwest was still Before it is settled, money will still need to be allocated continuously.
Under such circumstances, the Ministry of Revenue was able to support a hundred thousand troops to send troops to Korea for more than a year. The treasury was so full that it was unimaginable back then! Who dares to say that such a minister of household affairs is not good enough?
Of course, the best thing Gao Pragmatic has done is not supporting the war. In the eyes of the courtiers, the biggest good governance thing Gao Nanning and Gao Daoshi have done recently must be "salary increase"!
That's right, it's a salary increase. Gao Pragmatic had already submitted to the Emperor three days ago, proposing to raise the salaries of all civil and military officials throughout the country and the Manchu Dynasty!
This incident occurred extremely suddenly, with no warning before. However, less than ten days after he accepted the post of Marquis of Nanning and took up the post of Dongge University Scholar after his "three speeches", he submitted the memorial and asked for help from officials across the country. Salary increases, and the extent of the salary increase is quite shocking - the more junior officials, the greater the salary increase.
In the Ming Dynasty, the salary of officials in the Ming Dynasty was based on grain as the unit of measurement. The specific situation is: the first-grade official, the monthly salary is 87 shi; the first-grade, 74 shi; the second-grade, 61 shi; the second-grade, 48 shi. ; from the third grade, thirty-five stones; from the third grade, twenty-six stones; from the fourth grade, twenty-four stones; from the fourth grade, twenty-one stones; from the fifth grade, sixteen stones; from the fifth grade, fourteen stones Stone; from the sixth grade, ten stones; from the sixth grade, eight stones; from the seventh grade, seven stones and five buckets; from the seventh grade, seven stones; from the eighth grade, six stones and five buckets; from the eighth grade, six stones; from the ninth grade, five stones Five buckets; five stones from the ninth grade.
At this time, one stone of rice was about 90 kilograms. Assuming that the price of rice was 6 yuan per kilogram, the monthly salary of a first-grade official was nearly 47,000 yuan, while that of a county magistrate was only 4,000 yuan.
According to the highly pragmatic salary increase proposal, the monthly salary of the county magistrate will be suddenly increased to about 8,000 yuan, which is directly doubled. Moreover, according to his previous reforms, officials’ salaries are no longer paid in kind, such as food, but directly in silver. At the same time, they can also choose to pay small-amount banknotes from the Federal Reserve. This is another layer of formalities for officials - after all, they I can't finish all the rice, because I need more money.
Of course, the monthly salary increase for lower-level officials will be larger, but the salary increase for senior officials will be smaller. For example, Gao Pragmatic himself, excluding his title, other titles, etc., as the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, a second-rank official, his original salary was about 33,000 yuan, but after the salary increase, His regular salary is only equivalent to about 35,000 yuan, which is a very small increase.
The most interesting thing about this memorial is that when it was presented to the emperor, the emperor rarely responded quickly but did not respond for several days. As for the officials of the imperial court, it is even more interesting. Almost no one opposed Gao Pragmatic. The only few who "expressed dissent" only "questioned" whether this move was against Taizu's wishes, and their words were very mild. .
So the emperor finally couldn't sit still, and asked the Chief of Ceremonies to ask the Ministry of Household Affairs. The general idea was that the high salary for ministers and the low salary for junior ministers was to show the difference between superiority and inferiority, and to encourage everyone to be determined to make progress. Now the proposal of the Ministry of Revenue has not only been greatly weakened The difference in salary between ministers and minor ministers was eliminated.
Moreover, given that there are far more minor ministers than ministers, this move is likely to lead to the central government's finances being unable to make ends meet in the future, and "may not be effective for future generations." Therefore, the Ministry of Revenue is required to explain in detail.
This matter was of great concern to the civil and military officials of the court, and the Ministry of Revenue "lived up to expectations" and quickly submitted a "detailed explanation". According to Gao's pragmatic statement, this salary increase was precisely because the "minor ministers" were overwhelmed, and the salary increase was essentially to maintain integrity with high salaries.
In fact, the saying that high salary can support integrity is not complete. According to Gao's pragmatic experience, high salary alone will probably not be able to support integrity. In the final analysis, if you want to maintain integrity, you still need to have a complete supervision mechanism and an effective punishment mechanism.
However, the latter is still related to the former. After all, you cannot let a county gentleman's income be less than that of a skilled Jinghua worker. This is the reality of the current Ming Dynasty society - if it cannot be compared, the county gentleman will hardly be able to compare. They will definitely engage in small tricks, whether it is rent-seeking for power or direct corruption, and the imperial court cannot arrest and kill everyone like the Taizu Dynasty.
It's not that you can't kill him, but it's useless even if you kill him. The Taizu Dynasty killed hundreds of thousands of corrupt officials by using the torture method of skinning and pulling grass. But was corruption banned? No, corruption is even getting worse, because it essentially goes against the basic thinking of normal people, leading to a serious mismatch between social status and wealth and income.
Gao Pragmatic did not believe that he could make these feudal court officials feel that "serving the people" was the right thing to do. He could only carry out reforms and mediation by "matching social status to wealth and income as much as possible", while at the same time raising the level of support for grassroots local officials. supervision to achieve a relatively good result.
In his "detailed explanation", he cited some expenditures of local officials. For example, there are actually only three people in the county government who are "court officials" in the true sense. If the county magistrate does not hire his own masters to help handle some common affairs, in fact, the vast majority are You can't manage a county well.
However, the court doesn't care about the cost of hiring a master, and the county magistrate's salary is not enough. It's strange that he is not corrupt. We can't expect everyone to lose money to be an official, right? If everyone had that consciousness, tomorrow would have become a country of gentlemen.
The problem of masters is just one of many expenses. In short, the insufficient income of county magistrates is a low-level bug that has existed since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Not only must it be corrected, but it must be corrected step by step and thoroughly.
For example, regarding the issue of masters, Gao Pragmatic, in addition to raising salaries, also suggested that hiring officials be directly included in regular fiscal expenditure items. For example, he said, "Three people can be hired to be teachers in the upper county, two in the middle county, and two in the lower county." One person will be given a monthly salary and will be supported by the court."
In addition to the master, there are also other standing officials, government servants, etc., who are also within the scope of Gao Pragmatic's "court support".
However, this would obviously greatly increase the court's expenditure, which is why the emperor hesitated to agree. However, Gao Yingshi settled the accounts for him in the "detailed explanation", or gave him a way, which is the tax sharing system.
In this suggestion, Gao Pragmatic finally started to take a serious approach to the tax law that had troubled the Ming Dynasty for more than two hundred years. He proposed to set the commercial tax as a regular tax, and then determine the tax rate according to products and commodity categories. Generally speaking, those involving basic people's livelihood are subject to low taxes, those with high added value are subject to high taxes, and those who make huge profits are subject to heavy taxes.
Judging from the "detailed description" he submitted, at least no one dares to say that he is seeking personal gain, because Jinghua's own industries at least started with "high taxes", and there are many industries that have reached the standard of "heavy taxes" - —The old rule is, I hand it over myself first. Before you talk nonsense, you might as well take a good look in the mirror.
However, being pragmatic does not mean that all commercial taxes must be collected by the Ministry of Household Affairs. Since it is called a tax-sharing system, "sharing" is the key.
Today's society is not comparable to that of later generations. Even for tax collection, the administrative costs are much higher than in the computer and Internet era. Many things cannot be calculated accurately, so Gao Pragmatic can only make a rough one-size-fits-all calculation: commercial tax revenue The center gets 60%, and the local area gets 40%.
As for you saying that there are several levels of local government, such as governors, governors, chief secretaries, prefectures and counties, etc., the Ministry of Revenue will not care about these matters. How to divide the 40% of the commercial tax can be discussed later. Anyway, the Ministry of Revenue must take 60% to ensure the central government's Financial authority. Besides, the Ministry of Revenue has given you a salary increase and helped you share the regular expenses of masters, officials, government servants, etc., isn’t it natural that you should get the lion’s share?
Gao Pragmatic is certain that no matter whether it is the emperor or the officials, they must still be blind to his purpose. For example, it is unlikely that they will have a significant promotion effect on the local economy after the reform. Understand - but you may come to your senses over time.
This matter is not complicated to say. After the previous reform of the Ministry of Large Households, a lot of local money that could have been withheld was required to be turned over. Now it has been converted from commercial tax to regular tax. Then this commercial tax will become extremely important for local revenue. of an item.
Any local yamen would definitely like to have as much money as possible, but the commercial tax is collected and verified by the Ministry of Household Affairs, and they cannot do much fake business locally. Therefore, the only way to increase the commercial tax is to make local business more and more popular. The more developed. This forces local officials and even those who are not considered officials to find ways to maintain the business environment, thus promoting local development.
Um, will this cause a real estate bubble? That's not the case, because Ming Dynasty's business taxation system is very rough. There is no tax at all when buying and selling houses. There is not much "land financial dependence" in the local area. There will be no intention to push up housing prices. After all, high housing prices actually lead to business losses. The increase in business costs will not only bring no benefits to the current local yamen in the Ming Dynasty, but will also cause harm.
This approach is in line with Gao Pragmatic’s past reform ideas. He believes that unprofitable coercion is the most difficult to last for a long time. It is a high probability that people will die and the government will stop. Therefore, his reforms must allow the people or groups implementing the reforms to obtain partial benefits, and he will not hesitate to "bundle sales" for this purpose.
According to his experience, as long as there are clear benefits, those who implement the reform will be motivated to push forward. Even if one day he is pragmatic and ignores this, the system can continue to be implemented.
Of course, any reform must develop with the development of the times. Socialism cannot be achieved under the productivity conditions of the feudal era, and it cannot be achieved once and for all. However, that is either the next step of reform in the future, or it is not even something that he can see in this lifetime. I can only believe that later people will have enough political wisdom to solve it.
After this "detailed explanation" was submitted, after waiting for another two days, the emperor still did not approve it, but he called Gao Pangshi into the palace to discuss it face to face in detail for an afternoon. After that, the Supervisor of Rites finally approved the proposal. Although he did not agree to implement it nationwide, he did allow "North and South Zhili to take the lead in piloting."
Piloting, this approach seems to have become the standard for reform of the Practical School in the past twenty years. Since the Gao Gong era, many reform measures of the Practical School have been piloted first, and then gradually promoted after the pilot results are good. This time, the reform of raising the salaries of highly pragmatic and trustworthy officials and implementing a tax-sharing system also followed this routine, which is not bad.
This major reform, which in fact had a huge impact, was quietly turned over with the acquiescence of the whole court. But just as the matter was settled, North Korea suddenly sent a memorial requesting canonization.
Of course, the one who wants to be canonized is not the North Korean King Li Huan. He has been the king for many years. He was canonized by the Ming Dynasty as early as the beginning of his accession to the throne. There is no doubt about the legality and there is no need to make any unnecessary moves.
Now North Korea is requesting that the Ming Dynasty canonize the crown prince, that is, Guanghaejun Li Hui. However, this request is not from Li Xin. After Li Huo made Li Hui the crown prince and led the division of dynasties, the request was made by the ministers of the division of dynasties. They worked it out and gave it to Ming Dynasty.
Regarding the orthodoxy of the vassal prince, Zhu Yijun also attached great importance to it and immediately summoned all the cabinet ministers in the Wenhua Hall to ask for their opinions.
Originally, Gao Pragmatic thought that he would be in the minority on this matter because he was opposed to Gwanghaejun becoming the crown prince of Joseon. However, judging from the current precarious situation in Korea, it seems that Gwanghaejun's performance is still a bit "master of the people". "Image", so the other pavilion elders may support the canonization of Gwanghae-gun as the crown prince of Joseon.
Unexpectedly, the result was a big surprise. All the cabinet ministers expressed their opposition to the canonization of Lord Guanghai, but the reason was completely different from what Gao Pragmatic thought. They believed that although Li Hao currently had no legitimate son, Lord Guanghae still had an elder brother alive, so how could he be established instead of his eldest son? This is simply unreasonable!
In the view of the Ming Dynasty cabinet, the principle of "with direct descendants, without direct descendants" must not be broken! As for the legend that Li Juan, the king of Linhai in North Korea, fell into the hands of Japanese pirates and may no longer be alive, the Ming Dynasty cabinet stated that he must see his body in person and his body in death. In short, such an important matter as establishing the crown prince must not be taken lightly.
Although Gao Pragmatic looked at the fact that Lord Gwanghae could not be the crown prince from another perspective, since everyone's attitude was so clear now, he was not willing to "stand alone" and expressed his agreement with this attitude.
After Zhu Yijun expressed his position one by one, Zhu Yijun added some patches out of his own psychology and said: "What you dear friends said is absolutely true. I also believe that the superiority of concubines cannot be disturbed. Since the eldest son of the king If you are still here, is there any reason why your younger brother should be granted the throne?
Moreover, the King of Joseon, Li Xin, is still in his prime, and there is a possibility that he will give birth to a legitimate son in the future. If I canonize Li Hui at this time, and the King of Joseon has another legitimate son born, how will I and the court deal with each other? "
Of course Gao Jingshi knew the emperor's little thoughts, and of course the other elders also knew it, but no one pointed it out. Gao Jingshi even took the initiative and said: "If you don't have a direct descendant and the emperor is not old, it is the right way to reserve the throne first and wait for it."
Zhu Yijun clapped his hands with satisfaction and said: "Yes, this is the right way! Mr. Shen, just draft your reply accordingly."
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