Gao Jingshi's views on the Ming Dynasty's finances are consistent with the mainstream views of later generations, that is, he is very sure that the Ming Dynasty "hidden wealth among the people" - but the Ming Dynasty's hiding of wealth among the people was not a subjective will of the court. , but the supreme ruler of this court was deceived and passively hid wealth from the people, and hid it very seriously and exaggeratedly.
Whether serious or exaggerated, using such words inevitably requires a comparison, but at this time the Tatars did not exist. Moreover, the Tatars were a deformed regime in which a minority ruled the majority. In some aspects, they were not comparable, so they still had to be compared. It would be fair to compare it with the previous Han dynasty.
The Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty undoubtedly have one thing in common, that is, they are both feudal countries based on agriculture. Although this may seem like nonsense, it is very important and will be discussed later.
In terms of control over the country, the Song Dynasty was slightly stronger than the Ming Dynasty. Both the registered population and the number of registered acres were larger than the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, although the Song Dynasty seemed to have far more officials than the Ming Dynasty, they were actually parasitic on the country. On the contrary, there were fewer privileged classes, so the Song Dynasty had greater financial potential.
In terms of external situation, the situation of the Ming Dynasty was better than that of the Song Dynasty. Except for a few eras, it had almost no major enemies.
After all, the Mongols themselves were divided, and their power was very unconcentrated. The border trouble they caused to the Ming Dynasty was actually limited, and it could really only be regarded as a "border" trouble - so when Anda Khan broke into the pass and approached the capital, the Ming court Only then would they be so surprised and nervous, and only then would their border ministers and commanders come up with so many tricks to commit suicide.
Why? Because everyone really didn't expect that the right-wing Mongolia, which was still dying a few years ago, would actually be able to fake the corpse after changing to a new king.
Therefore, despite the fact that there were wars in the Ming Dynasty's borders from time to time, the scale was actually very small. The Ming Dynasty's foreign war expenditures before Wanli were generally relatively small. And if we look at the current situation after nearly thirty years of hard work, after the Japanese, North Korean, and Southeast Asian markets are fully developed, Ming Dynasty can obtain more external resources, and its overall economic strength today is definitely no worse than that of the Song Dynasty.
But there is a problem here. In an era when the foundation was still an agricultural country, the court's income mainly relied on digging stocks, because before the industrial revolution, the so-called industry today can only be regarded as handicrafts, and handicrafts truly directly create social wealth and industry. The social wealth created by machine industry after the revolution cannot be equated at all.
There is no need to explain the first industrial revolution. Machine factories replaced manual workshops, and machine production replaced manual labor. Due to the widespread use of steam engines and the use of fossil energy, human productivity increased explosively.
It's a pity that although Gao Pangshi has taught the principles of steam engines long ago, Jinghua still hasn't understood the concept of steam engines. Therefore, for a period of time, he always talked about the large-scale use of steam engines in later generations as if they relied on Watt's inspiration. I was very angry when the technology upgrade was completed as soon as it appeared - Watt was obviously just improving it. Without the foundation laid by those before Watt, how could this steam engine be so easy to develop?
In short, in this era, except for a few countries that make a living by robbing hay and grain or digging gold and silver mines, most countries still have to rely on extracting domestic resources to survive. At this point, let alone the Ming Dynasty, all the unified feudal dynasties in Chinese history are probably not as capable as the Song Dynasty.
In other words, only the Song Dynasty could take away a little benefit from the rich, while other dynasties basically failed. Of course, when it comes to mining stocks, the overall level of the Ming Dynasty is still medium. The Eastern Han and Sui and Tang Dynasties in the clan era may be the real hardest-hit areas, so we won’t mention it for now.
Let’s compare the Song and Ming dynasties and give a few examples to understand.
Take the salt tax, for example. In the Northern Song Dynasty, the salt output of Yancheng and Taizhou accounted for about half of the country's total. Some data say that the annual output of Huai salt was a little more than 900,000 yin. It is estimated that the national salt output at that time was about 2 million yin.
One quotation is 116.5 Song Jin (Note: This is according to the "History of the Song Dynasty·Tonghuo Zhi", each salt quotation is 116.5 Jin, and the price is 6 tons.), which is equivalent to 149 city Jin. In this way, the annual salt production in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 300 million jin.
The court of the Song Dynasty sold salt yin to salt merchants for 6 guan per yin. Since the total amount was 2 million yin, the salt tax was 12 million guan per year. It is known that the peak value of the salt tax in the Northern Song Dynasty was as high as 13 million guan, which was a little higher than this theoretical value. It can be seen that the salt tax collection in the Northern Song Dynasty was relatively reliable.
So what was the salt production in the Ming Dynasty? According to the "gang salt system" of the Ming Dynasty: merchants holding salt yin are divided into 10 yin by region. Each yin is 200,000 yin, and each yin is worth 300 kilograms of salt, or six cents of silver and four cents, which is called "woben". ", plus thirty taels of silver for tax, and thirty taels of silver for ministers (transportation).
It can be seen that the annual salt output of the Ming Dynasty was 600 million kilograms. At that time, one kilogram was equivalent to 596 grams in later generations, and the total amount was equivalent to 672 million kilograms in later generations. Considering that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty increased by about double that of the Northern Song Dynasty, the salt production also doubled. , which matches exactly.
Since the ratio of population and output is almost the same, let’s look at the final income. The Ming court's salt tax revenue was: for every 6 taels, 6 cents and 4 cents of silver it brought in, it deserved 13.28 million taels of silver, but... in fact, even at its maximum, it was only 2.5 million taels of silver.
That is to say, the Ming Dynasty obviously produced about twice as much salt as the Northern Song Dynasty, but the salt tax revenue was only one-fifth of the Northern Song Dynasty. Comparing the two, in the single item of salt, if the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty produced the same amount of salt, the fiscal revenue obtained by the Song Dynasty would be almost ten times that of the Ming Dynasty!
Oh, by the way, the retail price of a pound of salt in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 120 Wen. In the Ming Dynasty, a pound of salt was often worth three qian of silver, equivalent to 360 Wen.
It's really wonderful. Although the actual salt tax collected by the Ming Dynasty was only one-tenth of that in the Song Dynasty, the retail price was three times higher in the Ming Dynasty than in the Northern Song Dynasty.
Let me tell you another funny thing: In the feudal dynasties in Chinese history, except when the last dynasty was about to end and they were particularly ruthless in scraping the ground and peeling the skin, the taxes in other peaceful times were often greatly reduced as the country developed and the people became richer. The only exception to this rule was the Song Dynasty.
How taxes were raised in the Song Dynasty will not be introduced here due to space limitations. Anyway, during the two to three hundred years of the Song Dynasty, they were raised almost every few decades. There are various reasons. In short, they just went up, up, up, up, and they could only go up, not down. .
In other dynasties, for example, taking the Ming Dynasty as an example, in the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, 28 million shi of grain, 1.2 million pieces of cloth, 300,000 jins of silk, 7.66 million guan of banknotes, and 20 million shi of military settlements were collected, plus other messy items. Adding all the taxes in kind together, there are still taxes of 70 to 80 million yuan, which is about the same as in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty.
As a result, during the Hongzhi period, 19.56 million shi of rice, 6.77 million shi of wheat, 36,700 jin of silk, 1.15 million pieces of cloth, 88.42 million guan of banknotes, 73 million guan of miscellaneous notes, and 2.93 million shi of military grain were collected from all over the world... In addition to the Ming Dynasty Treasure In addition to the increase in banknotes, other items have declined to varying degrees.
For example, military settlements were only one-seventh of what they were in the Hongwu Dynasty, silk was one-tenth, and overall taxes were only two-thirds of what they were in the Hongwu Dynasty. Do you think this is terrible? No, no, no, this is not bad, because after a few decades, the military villages were simply gone, and Mao... no, not even a straw was left. By the time of the Jiajing Dynasty, only two-thirds of the Hongzhi Dynasty was left, and even less than half of the Hongwu Dynasty.
You see, what does it mean to hide wealth among the people, and what does it mean to make the country poor and the people rich? The Ming Dynasty was mighty.
Of course, there is a more mainstream saying in later generations, that is, when agricultural taxes were about the same and the Ming Dynasty was even stronger, the Song Dynasty's finances relied entirely on commercial taxes to counter the Ming Dynasty. This is generally correct, but I am afraid that some things have been overlooked intentionally or unintentionally.
In the ten years of Xining, the total tax revenue of the Northern Song Dynasty was 70.7 million guan, including 21.62 million guan from agricultural taxes, accounting for 30%, and 49.11 million guan from industrial and commercial taxes, accounting for 70%. This is clearly recorded.
You know, there were no large-scale military camps in the Song Dynasty. As a result, the agricultural tax revenue of the Song Dynasty was only slightly lower than that of the Ming Dynasty. What about commercial taxes? The commercial tax in the Song Dynasty was more than twice as high as the agricultural tax. On the other hand, the commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty... It cannot be said that everything is full of vitality, it can only be said that it is tiny and is better than nothing.
According to folk notes preserved by later generations, Sun Kegong, a cloth merchant from Songjiang, went to Beijing to sell cloth. He had to pass dozens of checkpoints along the way, and at each checkpoint there were people asking for money. The amount of taxes paid along the way was several times the value of the goods, so in the end he could only sell the cloth at a high price.
However, the problem was that at that time, most of the local cloth business in Beijing consisted of palace eunuchs smuggling palace cloths for takeout. The cost was extremely low, and regular merchants could not compete at all. In the end, Boss Sun had no choice but to seek shelter from his relatives and started smuggling. ——Because after taking shelter of the noble relatives, there will be far fewer people who want to take the card, or even basically none.
So when it comes to this, it can actually explain why Jinghua rose so rapidly in the early days. Jinghua's boss, Gao Pragmatic, was the nephew of Gao Gong, the then chief assistant. One of the two later chief assistants was his teacher and the other was his uncle. At the same time, his partners are either father-in-law or marquis, or even uncles, and these people are all related to Jingnan, not the idle nobles in Nanjing.
Under such a background, no matter whether it is the King of Hell or a kid, who can be so short-sighted and dare to find Jinghua to take advantage of him? Without these huge hidden expenditures, it goes without saying that Jinghua’s commercial competitiveness would be negligible.
Similarly, this also explains why Gao Pragmatic insisted that although the nobles seemed useless, they should still be listed as the first batch of allies he needed to win over.
Maybe the person's ability is indeed not that good, but one can never understand the world just by relying on ability. Again, all the monsters without a backing were beaten to death with a stick, and all the monsters with a backing were taken back by their masters and continued to live freely.
Journey to the West? This is just a record of the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty.
It's just that Gao Qingshi has a good background, so such dirty things can't happen to him at all - of course, he has encountered other people.
All in all, by comparing the Song and Ming dynasties, we can basically find out where the problem lies: How much did the subordinate officials who collected taxes collect? Where did you receive it? What did you get? Only God knows.
We should really praise the subordinate officials of the Ming Dynasty. They did not receive a single penny of salary from the imperial court, but they always worked hard without complaining, never changed jobs or ran away, and peacefully and peacefully made many contributions to the Ming Dynasty - including later the Tatars. Hundreds of years of tax. I have to say that this spirit of obedience is really... indescribable.
Since we are talking about subordinate officials, let me just say a few more words. People who study Ming history in later generations often complain that the number of government officials in the third class of the Ming Dynasty cannot be counted. This is of course true, because they have no establishment at all, so it would be strange if they could count them.
Moreover, most of the subordinate officials in the Ming Dynasty were not even the so-called "three shifts of government officials". They were just "helpers", but non-staff hired by officials (and eunuchs) "from their own pockets" - as Gao pragmatic mentioned just now .
The actual number of these people is probably more than ten times that of the third class of government officials. It is precisely because of the existence of this group of people that although the taxes of the Ming Dynasty were set very low at the court level, in various places, they were actually not light at all. If they were really light, they would not have been overthrown by the peasant uprising. .
Earlier in this book, it was mentioned that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty may have exceeded 200 million, but some people said it was wrong because historical records showed that it was only over 50 million. Hmm... So there was no war in the Ming Dynasty for two hundred years, and the population was almost the same as during the founding of the People's Republic of China?
The reality is that the yellow albums and fish scale atlases produced during the Zhu Yuanzhang era were left unattended for a long time since they were locked on the small island in Nanjing. Later, they were almost rotten, and none of the subsequent emperors were interested in conducting another national census. - It was useless for the emperor to do it, and the officials would not agree - so a very strange phenomenon occurred: the national population announced by the imperial court always fluctuated a little above the Hongwu standard.
Note that it can only fluctuate a little, never too much, and the population changes in each province can only fluctuate a little, because if there is too much change, then you have to worry that the emperor may adjust taxes when he thinks of this - this is absolutely impossible. No way.
So the actual situation is that the actual population of the Ming Dynasty should be at least twice that of the Song Dynasty, but the registered population is not as large as the registered population of the Song Dynasty, and the number of registered acres of land is not as large as that of the Song Dynasty. As for the hidden households and fields, and the scattering of false mails, etc. There are too many to count.
Logically speaking, the Ming Dynasty's agricultural tax base was clearly lower than that of the Song Dynasty, but in fact, the actual collection of agricultural taxes in the Ming Dynasty was higher than that in the Song Dynasty... Although the Ming Dynasty court did not have the ability to raise tax rates and squeeze farmers, In the Ming Dynasty, there were not only officials and subordinate staff, but a large number of them.
Therefore, let’s not say that the burden on farmers in the Ming Dynasty was lighter than that in the Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, the agricultural tax was only a small amount, and there was also the commercial tax, which was a great supplement. However, in the Ming Dynasty, the descendants of millions of royal families all relied on the agricultural tax to live their lives. If Gao Pragmatic hadn't relied on his own prestige and Zhu Yijun's lack of money to fight the war a few years ago, and he had to forcefully handle the issue of opening vassals and bans, now even if the Ministry of Revenue has taken back power, it will still be stretched in many cases.
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic has always believed that the low central fiscal revenue has little to do with the level of the basic tax rate. What matters is the implementation level of national tax collection and the audit and supervision level after collection. This is why he wants to train so many professionals who understand finance for the Ministry of Accounts and set up a separate audit office.
As for the fact that Gao Pragmatic is now proposing to raise salaries to officials again through the "three-class foreign nobility system"... this requires understanding of his consistent behavior: first give benefits, and then let you do the work before you can speak.
——
Thanks to book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your reward and support, thank you!
Thanks to book friends "Nazgeer" and "First Login" for their monthly ticket support, thank you!
Correction, the thank you in the previous chapter is wrong. The book friend "Book Friend 20170107012220447" voted for 9 monthly tickets. I may not have woken up at that time, and my eyes saw that there were 7 tickets. I apologize.
(End of chapter)
