"Why do you maintain workers so much?"

The Empress asked.

Obviously, even she didn't understand Yang Qing's approach, after all, there were countless factories in her own hands......

It's really countless.

Steel, textile, cement......

At present, almost all kinds of factories in the area controlled by the Ming Dynasty are indispensable to their families, either set up by themselves or jointly with others, not to mention the mines, the north and south two oceans shipping, whaling and colonial development, that is, the current cigarette factories have a large number of workers working in shifts, making boxes of cigarettes day and night......

The minimum at their house is also ten hours.

Although there is no such thing as an overseer patrolling with a whip, it is usually a kick for those who do not do their job well.

This is already quite humane in this day and age.

That is, the high salary.

But their factories also have to control costs to avoid being squeezed out of business, and at present, Daming is still in line with liberal capitalism, at least in terms of competition, but Yang Qing's factories rely more on new technologies and new processes to control costs. In addition, it also includes certain privileges, after all, buying the products of the Protector is an emotional investment, even if there is a slightly cheaper option, as long as it is not so cheap that it is really tempting, it is still the most cost-effective to buy the Protector's Mansion. In addition, there are internal orders for the army and Huangzhuang, which are also mainly based on Yang Qing's, and his family's factory was originally based on the original government-run factory that was swallowed.

But it is still impossible to say that Yang Qing's factory does not strictly control the treatment of workers.

Everyone has to control costs.

If the factories in Guangzhou are completely British at present, directly treating the workers as animals, and the first-class factories can be close to the early nineteenth century, that is, the workers eat meat at most three or four times a month, and each time a little less.

Rice is definitely edible.

However, the oil content of the dish still has to be strictly controlled.

However, fish is relatively cheaper.

After all, there are fish everywhere in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which is stronger than the British workers in the early nineteenth century.

Yang Qing's factory, on the other hand, is closer to the level of British workers in the late nineteenth century, and has been able to provide workers with no worries about food and clothing, but it cannot be said that they live well, at least it is still very hard. After all, a ten-hour work day, and there is no holiday similar to Sunday, but it is possible to take time off to rest, and of course there will be no paid leave.

Yang Qing believes that this is already worthy of conscience.

His workers, including him, also thought that the Protector was worthy of his conscience.

After all, others are twelve hours.

And the wages are lower than his.

And because they are recruited from Huangzhuang, these workers do not need to worry about pensions, and the expenditure on medical care and education is relatively low, after all, Huangzhuang has a medical center and a primary school for compulsory education. In general, Yang Qing doesn't have to worry about someone going on strike, in this era that is worse to some extent, he is at least the least bad, as for what eight-hour work, Sundays, paid vacations, etc., are all saved!

But......

"This is not good after all, we don't have to worry about this, but what if the workers of those factories on the court side also follow suit? Aren't they all messing up like this, marching and even occupying cities? You have to have a rule. ”

The Empress said worriedly.

"Not only do I want them to follow along, but I also want to erect a flag for them to plant there!"

Yang Qing teased his son and said.

The Empress looked at him quizzically.

"First of all, you have to understand what is the key to regulating the economy for a ruler.

Is it just to make money?

No, it's to sustain development.

So how do you sustain the economy?

Do you rely on overseas trade?

We are indeed constantly sucking in gold and silver from outside, and overseas trade has brought us prosperity to the present time.

But you have to understand that the market out there is limited.

There are about 60,000 people in the world at the moment, and more than half of them are extremely poor and cannot afford to consume anything, just like the black people in Africa, who can't even afford a piece of clothing, and India, whose population is only a little smaller than ours, but they are also extremely poor. Only a small number of people outside can really consume our products, our silk can no one in Europe except for the aristocracy, and our tea is only drunk by the rich. Therefore, exports cannot lead to sustained economic prosperity, and perhaps it can lead to the prosperity of a country with a population of 15 million, but it is absolutely impossible to bring a country with a population of 150 million to continue to prosper.

And we have more than a quarter of the world's population, and our blood pumping will make the countries outside poorer and poorer. This year, the amount of sugar purchased by the Wa Kingdom is decreasing, because they don't have enough money anymore, so we can't expect these poor people to buy more and more of our goods.

We can't rely on foreigners to grow the economy.

However, economic growth can only move forward and not backward, and if it retreats, there will be big problems, and even the whole country will be in turmoil, so in order to maintain the growth of industry, our most effective means is to expand domestic consumption. After all, we are the richest, the Ming is the richest country in the world, and we have a population of 150 million, which is the largest market in the world.

The first condition for expanding internal consumption is to let the people have money first.

Make things affordable for them.

Let them buy more, even if it's not necessary.

In the past, many women could not even afford to buy clothes.

Our efforts over the years have made all women affordable to buy clothes, and the same women who can afford to buy clothes have led to the first wave of rapid growth of our economy. Now that they have clothes, then we should find a way to give them the money to buy a second dress, and they can afford to buy a second dress to ensure that our economy continues to grow. And then when they both have a second outfit, we have to find a way to make it affordable for them to buy a third outfit......

Do women have too many clothes?

If they have money, they will keep buying clothes, even if she only wears them once, or even wears them, and I remember that many of your clothes have never been worn since they were made, right? Akihito has so many shoes that it needs a room to store them, so how many factories do you two support?

This is domestic demand.

What if they suddenly don't have the money to buy it?

The factory shut down all at once.

All of a sudden, the workers had no money to buy grain, the peasants' surplus grain was suddenly no one to buy, the cotton they planted was suddenly no longer wanted, and then the peasants had no money, and then they could no longer afford to buy oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and all kinds of commodities, and then more factories were shut down, more workers lost their jobs, and the vicious cycle continued to spread. In this way, the whole society and the entire economy collapsed all at once, the unemployed workers made trouble, the peasants were dissatisfied, the capitalists went bankrupt one after another, and the whole country fell into turmoil and even accidentally turned into a war, reshuffling and restarting. We have to prevent this kind of thing, but the capitalists only want to make money, they don't think about it, they just want to make money desperately, and if there is a profit they will even sell the rope that hangs themselves, and it is impossible to expect them to think about this kind of problem.

Especially at the time of this big development.

So we're going to be pushing them with this invisible hand. ”

Yang Qing said.

"I don't understand!"

Her Majesty shook her head and said.

Obviously, Yang Qing's economics is still a little ahead of her mind, after all, this is the accumulation of hundreds of years in later generations, and people in this era do not understand the concept of stimulating domestic demand at all.

"Well, then you just need to understand that I'm going to whip the factory owners to raise their wages."

Yang Qing said.

In fact, his economics is also a must.

Although when it comes to the Ming Dynasty, there is no doubt that they are looking forward to overseas trade, engaging in industry, and exporting goods all over the world to make a lot of money, but in fact, the situation is that the world in this era cannot support a Ming level industrial country by exporting. It's no problem to feed Britain into the industrial age, but don't forget that Britain had a population of 10 million at the time of industry, and this 10 million people already need to plunder the whole world to support. It takes the warships of the British Navy to blast open up markets and dump goods on the whole world, otherwise they will face an economic crisis and overproduction.

And at that time, the world's population was one billion.

Britain has only one percent of the world's population, and one industrialized Englishman exports goods to ninety-nine foreigners.

And what about Da Ming?

More than 1.5 billion.

And there are only 600 million in the world.

It is completely impossible for an industrialized Ming man to export goods to three foreigners, which the current world can support, that is, the industrialization of millions of people. At present, the actual industrial population of Daming has reached this number, and the reason why we can't see saturation is only because the steam engine has just been applied and has not really developed. Once it really enters the steam engine in an all-round way, then the current industrial population already needs the Ming Navy to use naval guns to open up new markets.

To put it simply, his development is ahead of his time.

Both being ahead and backward are out of place.

In this era when the vast majority of people were abject poor, Yang Qing's steam factory could not be consumed.

The solution can only be to boost domestic demand, build large-scale infrastructure, push the army to expand and consume excess capacity, use plundering to stimulate consumption, and more importantly, increase workers' incomes so that they can buy more things. It is completely impossible to expect the capitalists to take the initiative to raise the wages of the workers because they make more money, just as the gentry of the Ming Dynasty are exempt from taxes, and they do not see them feeding the tenants.

The only way is to force them.

But the protector can't force the factory owners to raise their wages!

Then let the workers do it themselves!

He only needs to be the black hand behind the scenes, and not only this, the next public land law in Jiangnan will also cause a certain degree of return of the agricultural population, and the final result will be to force the factory owners to raise wages. At the same time, it also forced them to turn to the steam engine, and finally used the steam engine to lower the cost of increasing wages, as for the external competition can be ignored at all, how can the British, who have not even evolved the Jenny machine, compete with the steam engine? ()

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