In order to verify his conjecture, Liu Hong took out a three-baht coin of acceptable condition without a trace, and asked: "Yu Fang just heard that the public seems to be saying that it is eight baht for money, and one hundred and forty-two pieces of coarse linen are needed?" ”

Looking at the three-baht coin in Liu Hong's hand, the corners of the man's eyes suddenly narrowed, and his tone became slightly cold: "A contemptible businessman should not be commensurate with the young gentleman." ”

"If Shaojun comes here, he wants to have fun, and in the opinion of contemptible, Shaojun should find another plaything!"

As he spoke, the respect in the man's gaze gradually faded, and his spine straightened slightly.

"Contemptible view of the young monarch, it seems to be the son of the prince?"

"Even so, the master family behind the contemptible man may not be something that the young monarch's high hall can offend."

Seeing that the shopkeeper of the cloth shop looked ashamed and humiliated, Liu Hong smiled meaningfully, threw the three baht money in his hand on the cloth, and turned around and withdrew from the cloth shop.

It seems that Liu Hong did not seem to get the answer he wanted; But in fact, the reaction of the shopkeeper of the cloth shop is already very revealing.

- Men naturally dare not accept three baht coins openly; But for the three-baht coin, even if it is the three-baht coin that Liu Hong took out and is in quite good condition, ordinary businessmen are not good at all!

Walking down the street, Liu Hong slowly stopped, turned around slightly, glanced at Ling Mian, and called another guard to his side.

"I... Let me ask you: If Yu takes three baht coins of this fineness, and Yi'er has eight baht coins in his hand, are you willing? ”

Three three-baht coins, according to the law formulated by Empress Lu, their face value should be nine coins, and it should be very easy to exchange one eight-baht coin.

Unexpectedly, when the guard heard this, he hurriedly took out a small cloth bag from his arms, and respectfully presented it to Liu Hong with both hands: "If the young gentleman asks for something, the little one respects himself, how dare he say it?" ”

Hearing this, Liu Hong shook his head with a light smile and continued to walk forward.

Liu Hong didn't believe that an officer who could be selected by Ling Mian from the Flying Fox Army and enter the palace as a squire could not hear the meaning of his words.

Therefore, the meaning of the squire is also very simple: Your Majesty, I'm afraid you're not joking...

Three three-baht coins, with a face value of nine baht, are not enough to exchange for an eight-baht coin...

The unification of the currency market must be put on the agenda!

Secretly writing down this matter in his heart, Liu Hong quickened his pace and walked straight towards the grain shop gathering area in the north of the city.

-- The main purpose of coming to Dongshi this time is food.

Some time ago, the impact of the soaring food prices was not as simple as Liu Hong felt.

Food prices have soared to 5-6 times the original amount, which may be a loss of money for ordinary families.

But for those people at the bottom who are already poor and have enough food rations left at home to eat half full, as long as the price fluctuation of food exceeds 10 percent, it will be a disaster!

The reason is very simple: a peasant household needs about 100 yuan of grain a year, and the money left by the family happens to be about 85 yuan per stone, which is enough to keep 9,000 yuan; Even left a margin of five hundred dollars.

At this time, as long as the price of grain rises to 90 yuan, the fault tolerance rate of the household will be gone, and if it rises to 95 yuan, then the family will have at least a month without grain this year!

It is true that when they learned in advance that there would be a one-month food shortage, the family could save money, take some of it out, and borrow it from the neighbors to get through that month.

But don't forget: this is only the impact of the price of food rising from eighty-five to ninety-five!

As long as the price of grain exceeds 100 yuan, the family will have no choice but to sell the land in exchange for food rations.

Then, the vicious circle that the peasants in the feudal history of two thousand years could not escape began: less land, less grain was harvested, and the next year there was not enough to eat, so they could only sell another part of the land; Less land, less harvest, more insatiable, continue to sell land...

In the end, when the family's land was sold, there was not a single acre left, and the original homesteaders could only rent and become tenants.

And renting someone else's land is a tax to pay!

Compared with the agricultural tax of the country's fifteenth tax and one tax, the rent tax on renting seeds can only be described as black-hearted - even in Guanzhong, and even near Chang'an City, the land rent of tenants renting acres of land will not be less than 30%!

Thirty percent of the annual harvest must be used as a tax; Although there is no need to pay agricultural tax, there is still a poll tax of 120 yuan per person per year; The rest of the grain is almost impossible to feed the stomach of a family.

What should I do if I can't eat enough and I don't have land to sell?

Borrow.

Tenant farmers who borrowed money and grain, and wanted to cope with the past, would pay it back, but in the end they would find that the debts they owed could not be repaid at all, and they would accumulate them all the time.

Eventually, the debt reached a certain amount, and the merchant who lent the money decided that the tenant farmer could not afford it, and began to demand that it be paid - within a few days, the debt must be paid!

Desperate tenant farmers end up selling their sons and daughters, and even selling themselves into slavery.

In the feudal era, land annexation that could hardly be avoided was mostly such a process: if you can't get enough to eat, you sell your land, sell your land and rent your seeds, rent and rent and build up debts, and you can only sell yourself as a slave.

Therefore, every large-scale fluctuation in grain prices is actually absorbing the longevity of the dynasty - every time the price of grain soared some time ago, a group of peasants will lose their land, become tenant farmers, and in the near future become slaves, disappearing into the household registration of the state statistics.

Even those yeoman farmers who were lucky enough to guarantee their acres of land during this grain price fluctuation will actually be hit hard - perhaps, the family originally saved a surplus of money, which could send their children to study and practice martial arts, to change the fate of the family; But the family was frugal, spent more than ten years or even decades, and the savings they had saved one by one were cut away like leeks by grain merchants.

A family that had the opportunity to break through the shackles of class and develop in a better direction was dashed.

land annexation intensified, class contradictions intensified; The country has lost a number of middle-class supporters, lost taxpayers; And the yeoman farmers who were originally willing to pay the grain tax obediently were replaced by the local clan Haoqiang who plucked the feathers of the geese...

So Liu Hong knew very well in his heart: the price of food soared some time ago, although it was finally resolved by himself as quickly as possible; But the damage to the yeoman class is almost irreversible.

Even Liu Hong estimates with the most optimistic attitude that the soaring grain prices, which lasted less than two months, have turned at least 5 percent of yeoman farmers into semi-yeoman farmers, or even directly into tenants.

This is undoubtedly a painful lesson for Liu Hong - the yeoman peasant class is the biggest supporter of the feudal dynasty, as well as the basic plate.

The collapse of any feudal dynasty cannot escape one central problem: the low number of yeoman peasants and the inability to guarantee a normal life.

The people who were supposed to stay at home and farm diligently have become landless vagrants; I can't eat enough, I can't find anything to do, and whoever comes out and shouts 'anti-fucking' will take his life to fight for wealth.

Therefore, in order to maintain their supporters, the feudal emperors would try to improve the living conditions of the people at the bottom of the people—at the very least, to slow down the decline of the yeoman peasant class and the annexation of land.

As a traverser, it is naturally impossible for Liu Hong not to even understand this truth.

This grain price fluctuation incident made Liu Hong have an idea in his heart: the grain price protection policy.

The government stepped in to set a fixed price range to reduce the impact of food fluctuations on the people at the bottom.

Today, the purpose of Liu Hong's visit to Dongshi, in addition to figuring out the tricks that the Yamen of the Inner History is playing, is to conduct on-the-spot investigations for the formulation of the grain protection price policy.

Walking into the grain store, what caught Liu Hong's eyes was all kinds of grains displayed in cloth bags.

There is wheat, rice, and corn with the best sales and is the staple food of ordinary people, exuding a pale yellow luster.

A bamboo plaque was inserted on the corn with the price inscribed: 80 yuan.

Looking at the shopkeeper standing on the street, every time someone passes by, he repeats 'rice stone eighty dollars', Liu Hong can't help but feel funny.

This time, the grain merchants in Guanzhong undoubtedly lifted stones and smashed themselves in the foot.

Logically speaking, if you obediently sell grain at a price of about 90 yuan, although the profit is limited, at least you will make a steady profit and not lose money -- after the autumn harvest, it is almost impossible for grain merchants to go to the countryside to buy grain at a price of more than 75 yuan!

Even if the storage cost of several months is calculated, the selling price of 90 yuan still has a profit of more than 10 yuan per stone; Then, as time went on, the price of grain slowly rose again, stopping at around 95 cents before the autumn harvest, which was a profitable year for grain merchants.

But for a while, the ghosts were confused, and the grain merchants in Guanzhong paid a painful price - Liu Hong personally went down as the emperor and opened the 'Shaofu' grain to sell in the East Market, which made the grain merchants hoard more than eighty-five yuan and could not sell it at all!

As time goes by, the cost of corn storage will only continue to rise, and with Shaofu (Liu Hong) watching, it is unlikely that the price of grain will exceed 85 yuan for the whole year of this year.

As a result, the vast majority of grain merchants in Guanzhong have determined that the profit of this year has been determined to be negative - when the first day of February comes, the cost price of corn in the hands of grain merchants has reached 85 yuan!

Now, the only thing grain merchants can do is to sell as fast as they can, throw out the grain they have hoarded, reduce storage costs, and stop losses in time.

As a result, after the strange 'food shortage', a large amount of food that exceeded the demand suddenly appeared on the market.

If it is said that no matter how high the grain merchants sell for two months, the people can only grit their teeth and buy it, but now, as long as the people say, 'Whoever has the grain shop next door is still cheaper,' the grain merchants will not bother to confirm it, and will hurriedly reduce the grain price by another two yuan.

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