This night, in addition to the three official documents sent to Beijing and the silver, Zhu Ping'an was arranged to draft more than ten other official documents, all of which implemented the spirit of tonight's court meeting. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Because the matter was urgent, these public civilians had to be printed and issued early in the morning, so they worked overtime until late at night, and Zhu Ping'an was able to drag his tired body and lay himself on the small bed in the low house.

This has been two consecutive nights of overtime, and each time he has worked overtime until about early morning, Zhu Ping'an's tired finger doesn't want to move.

However, although he was sleepy and tired, Zhu Ping'an couldn't sleep while lying in bed.

Although the night is already deep, but this low value house is still like a steam oven, stuffy is not good, it is estimated that it is about to rain, and it is not hot inside and outside the value house.

Not only hot, but also noisy.

The frogs in the rice fields opened up by Emperor Jiajing outside the city kept croaking uncontrollably, and the cicadas on the trunks did not admit defeat.

Why are there so many frogs and cicadas in the palace, Zhu Ping'an lay on the bed speechless for a while, unable to fall asleep.

After finally falling asleep, Zhu Ping'an was awakened by a nightmare, in which there was a family whose family was ruined because of the additional tax on Beijing materials and silver, and the hostess before throwing himself into the well cursed the officials who printed and issued the documents.

In a cold sweat.

It's too real.

Zhu Ping'an closed his eyes now, and the scenes appeared in front of him, the desperate and sad eyes of the hostess, as if it really happened.

ay

Zhu Ping'an couldn't help but get up and get out of bed, sat in front of the window in the dark, looked at the long night outside the window, and was stunned.

At this time, Daming was already a giant ship in disrepair in the sea, and it was already capsizing after a hundred years.

The current emptiness of the treasury is a microcosm of a fiscal crisis. The immediate cause of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty was not so much a peasant uprising as a financial crisis.

The financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty was like opening Pandora's box.

Because of the financial crisis

Therefore, when natural disasters and famines occurred, the Ming Dynasty had no financial resources to provide disaster relief, which led to the lack of credibility of the Ming Dynasty and led to chaos among the people in order to survive;

Therefore, it led to a shortage of military salaries, insufficient weapons and equipment, and recruitment training, a decline in the combat effectiveness of the Ming army, and a series of failures in foreign wars and internal counterinsurgency wars.

The financial crisis, which spawned refugees and mutinous soldiers, led to a series of domestic uprisings and rebellions, which grew stronger and stronger.

The financial crisis caused the Ming army to lack combat effectiveness, unable to quell domestic rebellions, and unable to clear foreign invasions.

In this way, the vicious circle of more than a hundred years, when it came to Chongzhen, the giant ship of the Ming Dynasty, which was riddled with holes, finally capsized.

At this time, Zhu Ping'an could not have imagined that the most developed and prosperous country in the world, Daming, would fall to such a financial crisis.

It is a huge empire with more than one billion acres of arable land, a population of nearly 300 million, a huge development of industry and commerce, and the emergence of capitalism, accounting for more than two-thirds of the world's industrial output.

However, its tax revenues were not enough to keep it running and arming hundreds of thousands of troops.

The invasion of tens of thousands of soldiers and horses of the Northern Hualtan Khan has left the northern border of this empire like a sieve, full of holes.

It's unbelievable.

This kind of tax income is too abnormal.

Is there something wrong with the tax system?

Yes, but not entirely.

You must know that when the Ming Dynasty was first founded, it was the period of Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, at that time, the Ming Dynasty did not have more arable land than it is now, the population was not as large as it is now, and the industry and commerce were not developed now, but the tax income at that time was completely enough to meet the operation of this huge empire, whether it was large-scale construction, large-scale foreign wars, or disaster relief, it was more than enough.

After Zhu Yuanzhang founded the People's Republic of China, he sent Meng Yuanda into exile in Europe on several Northern Expeditions; During the period of his son Chengzu Zhu Di, he raised troops to the outside world again and again, with 500,000 troops attacking Mongolia five times, hundreds of thousands of troops repeatedly conquering Vietnam in the south, building the Forbidden City, and building construction in Wudang Mountain, as well as the famous Zheng He in history who went to the West seven times, and did not see any financial crisis.

You must know that the tax system of the Ming Dynasty has basically not changed since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Why did arable land increase, population increase, industry and commerce developed, but the taxes levied according to the tax system since the founding of the country could not satisfy the operation of the empire, resulting in a financial crisis?

Zhu Ping'an, who is from modern times, knows the root cause very well.

However, it is a pity that not many people know this now, of course, some people may have seen it, but due to various reasons, maybe it is a concern, or it may be a cause but there is no solution to know, and it is not said.

Tonight's meeting was attended by either cabinet ministers or secretaries of various ministries, but the several measures taken in tonight's meeting were all palliatives rather than cure.

And some measures, such as sitting on the Beijing Silver, are symptomatic in the short term, but in the long run, the gains outweigh the losses.

One of the biggest problems of the Ming Dynasty is the serious annexation of land.

The land annexation of the Ming Dynasty was too serious, although there was more and more arable land, but the owners of the land were less and less, and the arable land of the Ming Dynasty was more and more highly concentrated in the hands of a few people.

Emperor Jiajing's cousin Zhu Houzhao just succeeded to the throne and set up seven imperial villages, and later set up more than 30 imperial villages one after another, and the amount of cultivated land in the imperial villages far exceeded that of the previous dynasties.

The royal family, bureaucrats, and gentry were not far behind.

To put it disrespectfully, it is not very clear how much land his master Xu Jie has now, but Zhu Ping'an knows that when Xu Jie was the first assistant, he occupied 240,000 mu of fertile land in Su Song's hometown and had tens of thousands of tenants; There is also the current Shoufu Yan Song, who occupies cultivated land all over Jiangxi, Nanjing, Yangzhou and other places, and there are countless of them.

According to the information consulted by Zhu Ping'an in modern times, there are about half of the fertile land in the vicinity of the capital of the Ming Dynasty, which belongs to the royal family, bureaucrats and gentry after the land annexation.

The land was highly annexed to royalty, bureaucracy and gentry.

You must know that most of these lords of land annexation belong to the privileged class of the Ming Dynasty, and according to the tax system, they are privileged.

The royal family, princes, relatives, and lords enjoyed the privilege of being exempt from taxes, grain, and servitude; Officials' families are exempt from forced labor; Zhishi officials "return to their homes and have nothing to do with them for life"; In addition to the exemption of the students themselves, the indoors are exempted from two dings.

and the landless people became their tenants, and under their shadow, they were exempted from servitude of the state.

So, there is more arable land, more people, but less taxes.

The original tax system of the Ming Dynasty could no longer cope with the fact that land annexation and so on.

In the future, Zhang Juzheng's whip law will be more advanced than the current tax system, allowing the Ming Dynasty to recover some vitality, but it is also a minor repair.

At least, a hundred years later, the Qing Dynasty's "paving into acres" was much more advanced than a whip method.

Of course, in addition to agricultural taxes, there are also many problems with commercial taxes......

But the question is, what's the use of knowing so much?!

Zhu Ping'an sat in front of the window, looking out of the dark window, and silently put Zuo Qiu Ming's "Zuo Chuan. Cao Di's Polemic" was silently recited, and what made Zhu Ping'an sigh was not the sentence "One blow, then decline, and three exhaustions", but the sentence that Cao Di said to his fellow villagers, "Meat eaters despise and fail to plan far".

I don't want to sit in the audience and watch the play, I want to perform on stage......

Ay......

Zhu Ping'an shook his head again and smiled bitterly, he also knew that it was unrealistic, this was not a novel, how could he be qualified to perform on stage as a small six-grade official.

However, Zhu Ping'an's gaze outside the window became more and more determined.