Cui Junsu said to Li Gang, "The people of the Sui Dynasty had to pay the same rent no matter how much land they had, and the service was free, and if they served for less than 20 days, they had to pay silk for service every day. But in my court, all the miscellaneous expenses and labor are distributed into the acres of the fields with a whip, and the taxes are not based on the ding, but on the acres of the fields, so the people are actually much more relaxed. ”

However, in this way, the expenses of the imperial court have actually increased. The reduction of regular taxes, the absence of free civil servants for all kinds of labor, and the need to pay for hired labor, have increased a large amount of expenditure on civil engineering work in various localities. Building roads and bridges, waterways and cities, and even repairing river berms have become additional expenses.

For example, in the counties along the Huai River, due to the many floods of the Huai River, the embankment and slope protection have to be repaired every year, and this expenditure cannot be borne by the locality, and the imperial court must draw money every year.

For this reason, the imperial court now has to set up several other yamen, one of which is the canal governor's yamen, responsible for the dredging and maintenance of the canal, and the other is the river governor's yamen, which is responsible for the management of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the Huai River, the Han River and other rivers.

The river manager is in charge of dredging and embankments of rivers and lakes.

The large rivers and lakes in various places are directly managed by the river yamen of the imperial court, and are no longer borne by the localities, which can be regarded as reducing the burden on the local government, and at the same time, they are uniformly dispatched by the imperial court to increase management efficiency.

The expenses of these two governors for a year were quite staggering, and many of them were the wages of the hired servants.

"Li Dongge, in the past, the people often said, the harsh taxes are fiercer than the tiger, the people are suffering from servitude, the previous dynasty, digging the canal to build the east to build the Great Wall to conquer Liaodong, the great battle continued, the people were poor, and finally the world boiled back. I felt that this was the only way to replace the rent-to-wage adjustment system with these two taxes, and to divide the local miscellaneous expenses and labor into the acres of land to alleviate the suffering of the people. Isn't that right, you say? ”

Li Gang had nothing to say, and of course he was wrong not to say that the emperor.

"In the past, Yang Jian built Chang'an, Yang Guang built Luoyang, the Sui Dynasty and the Emperor of the Sui Dynasty, built the East and West Beijings, and recruited many people, all of whom were free servants, and the people brought their own dry food to do the service, and the time spent on the road was sometimes even several times that of the service, but will the Sui Dynasty take care of this loss?"

"And now, in recent years, the imperial court has successively repaired some palaces in Luoyang and Chang'an, which used a lot of people, but the imperial court did not have a free servant half-a person, all of them were paid to hire, the people came to work, voluntarily recruited, food and accommodation were on the construction site, there were wages every day, never owed a single labor money, the people exchanged labor for wages, subsidized the family, everyone was very happy, no one was dissatisfied and resentful."

"The money spent by the imperial court to repair the palace and renovate the city was not directly used from the treasury, but through commercial means, and in the end both won profits. For example, last year, Chang'an City demolished the wall of the street to change the market, demolished the old wall, repaired the drainage ditch, added public toilets and bathrooms, increased the number of wells, etc., and spent a lot, but in the end, the newly built market shops were sold or rented out, and the expenses were returned to the cash, and there was even a lot of surplus. ”

In later generations, everyone knew how to run a city, and a city is actually a huge commercial entity. Now Luo Cheng has also begun to quote some of this concept, changing the simple administrative means in the past to commercial operation methods, such as Chang'an and Luoyang, which are representative cities, and the performance is not bad.

Chang'an's street market renovation pilot, the imperial court demolished the workshop wall, changed the street shop, rented and sold, and became a land seller, a land developer, and finally a street shop manager, making not a little money.

It is precisely because of this success in Chang'an that Luo Cheng promoted Yin of Chang'an Mansion to Yushi Zhongcheng before adulthood, and he was almost not hindered at all. Although he is young, his political achievements are there.

Luo Cheng actually looks down on Li Gang, an old Confucian who is a bit old-fashioned, but his moral education is not bad, which is why he has always kept Li Gang as the prince's teacher, for his heir, Luo Cheng knows that he has ordinary ability, but he still hopes that the prince can be decent and have a good character. It doesn't matter if the ability is weak, the emperor will have the assistants to assist in the administration, but if the emperor's character is not good, then the country will have a big disaster.

"Mr. Li only saw the money from the imperial court, but he didn't see where the money came from and where it went."

"What do you know about taxes?"

Li Gang looked at the emperor, "Taxation is the financial source of the imperial court. ”

"That's right, but you only said the surface, taxation is not only the financial source of the imperial court, he is also a tool for governing the country, he is the distribution of wealth, is the root of the stability of the world, the essence of taxation is fairness and justice, but this fairness is by no means a public apportionment."

Whether an imperial court is not popular with the people and can be strong or not is actually rooted in its tax system.

Like the Sui Dynasty, the tax on people, which is the most backward tax system, seems to be fair, but in fact it is the biggest unfairness, which will inevitably lead to the instability of the country's foundation.

What is the essence of taxation? It is a redistribution of social wealth, which means that the poor pay less taxes and the rich pay more, and whoever occupies more social resources and gets more wealth has to pay more taxes.

The Sui Dynasty went the opposite way, and it is not uncommon for two lifetimes to die.

Just like Wang Mang's usurpation and reform, his death was also due to the tax system, and Wang Mang's tax system was even more in the air, so he died faster.

"Taxes are the state!" Luo Cheng said four words directly.

If there is no tax, there is no country, and if a country is to be maintained, it must be taxed by its citizens. The embodiment of the state is taxation. Just like at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court could only tax ordinary people, officials and scholars did not need to pay taxes, and even those who were attached to their names were also exempt from taxation, so the Ming Dynasty was actually not a normal country for a long time.

He could only repeatedly raise the salaries of ordinary poor people, and the end result was a peasant revolt and the destruction of the country.

Why did the Great Qin change the tax system after the founding of the country, one of the important is that the officials and gentry pay grain in one piece. Noble officials could be converted into money for service, but they were never exempt from tax.

The emperor could give them privileges such as higher salaries, or even door shades, but never give them the privileges of tax exemption.

The core of Daqin's tax law is the property tax, not the personal tax. Even if you are a slave, a maid, or even a Hu man, as long as you own property in the land of Daqin, then you will inevitably have to pay taxes, but you will only have to pay taxes.

"Master Li, you can actually go to the streets more, ask these ordinary people, and ask them when they are happier compared to the Sui Dynasty."

In terms of happiness, Luo Cheng is confident that the Qin State, which has only been established for six years, definitely makes the people feel happier than the Sui period.

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