With the current per capita consumption of grain, meat, poultry eggs, dairy products, vegetables, sugar, and edible oil, the living standards of the people above the civilian level of the empire can steadily exceed the subsistence line.

Ordinary families whose economy is on the average line can eat a meal of fine noodles and white rice for three to five days, and a meal of meat for ten days and half a month.

The common class can even save a little reserve funds by buying treasury bonds or buying bank wealth management products, which can be used by their children to marry their daughters-in-law and build new houses in the future.

In the current era, it is already an exaggerated achievement to let tens of millions of people reach this standard of living, and it is not too much to evaluate the republican prosperity in the future history books.

Even the common people, in terms of the current food possession, compared with other dynasties vertically, can at least be mixed with a rough evaluation, which means that they can drink porridge during the slack season, eat when the farm is busy, usually find opportunities to work part-time jobs to earn some change to sell some needles and threads, or at the end of the year, it is not too difficult to pull a few feet of cloth for the mother-in-law and children to make a new dress.

The life of slaves was far from the same, except for those lucky ones who worked as slaves and maids in large households, slaves who cultivated land in poor places or serfs and miners in large farms and mines had to rely on hunting small beasts, or mixing the coarsest foods such as mushrooms, wild vegetables, and acorns picked by themselves in multigrain porridge, and barely survived half-starved.

Had it not been for the occasional sugar and cheap sausages made of fish and minced meat that the Empire occasionally distributed during the holidays as a placebo, and reserved an upward channel for the slaves, these slaves would have erupted in a mass death wave or outright armed uprising.

In fact, the empire did not lack food, and it was not impossible to give more food to slaves, but this would not open up the standard of living for all classes, and it would not be possible to stimulate the lower classes to work their way up.

What's more, the empire needed more grain reserves to meet unforeseen needs, or to balance the domestic grain market.

In previous dynasties, successive bumper harvests could easily lead to a sharp drop in grain prices, which would hurt the peasants' enthusiasm for production.

However, the poor harvest is naturally worse, and it is not a problem that hurts the peasants, but may shake the national capital.

Combined with the transformation of national water conservancy projects, large-scale collective pest eradication operations, and relatively abundant sources of fertilizer (the development of animal husbandry can provide more fertilizer, in addition to the Empire's struvite resources in the South Seas), land yields in the core of the empire have been steadily rising.

In order to stabilize prices, at present, the empire implements the national policy of unified purchase and sales of staple food crops in various places.

Specifically, after the harvest every year, except for the agricultural tax, the seeds and the food grain that the farmers themselves need for the next year, the rest of the grain is purchased by the state according to the standard price.

According to the cost of growing grain in various places, the price of grain purchased by the unified purchase has been slightly adjusted, but it is higher than the purchase price of private grain stores, so as to avoid things like "overcharging three or five buckets".

This kind of unified purchase is not compulsory, but the state has the highest price of grain purchases, and if the peasants want to sell grain, they can only make the most money by selling it to the state, and the peasants also need cash to buy fertilizers and other daily necessities, and it is impossible not to sell the surplus grain at all.

This is equivalent to the state stepping forward and directly holding up the grain purchase price.

After that, when the state sells grain to the outside world, it will also be priced according to the local market, usually slightly higher than the purchase price, because there is a cost to purchase, reserve, and sell, and the empire cannot lose money.

The price will not be too high, but it will not be too low, and if the private grain banks are willing to cut prices to grab the market, then the empire will applaud and welcome it.

If the profiteers wanted to eat it on a large scale and then hoard it, then the empire was not against it - the empire had huge state farms in the Great Northern Wilderness and Annam Province in its hands, and with agricultural taxes to support it, cheap food was enough to drown all the private capital that dared to make such attempts.

In fact, in some parts of Jiangnan, this kind of economic war has already happened many times.

For example, in Jinling, during the autumn harvest of 1795, the empire openly bought surplus grain from the peasants at a price of 2 taels and one stone, while the private rice shops controlled by the major wealthy families offered only 1 tael.

In 1796, when some areas of Jiangxi Province were flooded and the grain was not harvested, the wealthy families were preparing to transport grain to sell at a high price and prepare to make a big profit, and the empire sold grain at a price of 3 taels and one stone in Jiangxi Province.

You must know that before the arrival of imperial grain, the local gentry even raised the price of grain to 10 taels and one stone themselves! If the wealthy families from other places were added, the price should have been raised to 15 taels or even 20 taels, until the peasants were forced to sell their fields and houses, sell their sons and daughters, and finally sell themselves to the extent that they could have a bite to eat.

Taking advantage of the disaster, annexing land for small households, and lending money, this is the usual means for most large households to make a fortune.

In order not to miss this good opportunity, the wealthy families from Jinling, Hangzhou (Lin'an), Yangzhou, the provinces south of the Yangtze River and the local people of Jiangxi Province united like never before, and ate the grain sold by the empire on a large scale, artificially creating a food shortage.

But the empire is just such a silent transportation of grain, where it is easy to send large floods, shipping is usually very developed, a large ship can transport tens of thousands of stones of brown rice, so the empire is not afraid of insufficient capacity.

As a result, within half a month, the empire transported 3.9 million stone of grain to the disaster area! Not only has the price of grain been pressed at the level of three or two stones, but the people affected by the disaster have also been allowed to work for relief and earn a share of food to support their families by participating in the reconstruction of water conservancy facilities.

The wealthy families who ate 3 million stone of grain raw lost a face full of blood - the victims are not stupid, if there is a choice, who will not eat 3 taels of grain instead of selling their ancestral business to buy 15 taels of sky-high grain?

After the disaster basically passed, three million stone of grain was backlogged in their hands, and the wealthy families who had not been able to make a windfall had to sell the grain at a reduced price.

Unfortunately, the purchase price of the empire this time is still 2 taels and 1 stone .......

The money of the wealthy family is not unlimited, such as the top wealthy families of the four major families of Jinling, in the later stage of this economic war, they also secretly poked and poked the bank loan to eat food, and when the time came, the bank pinched the loan, and the wealthy family with no liquidity in their hands could only sell at a loss, and the result was that they lost more than three million taels in a few months.

This is not in addition to the interest that should be paid to the bank on the loan, and the loss caused by the bank directly recovering the collateral after the loss cannot be closed.