If it weren't for appreciating the people-oriented ideas of a scholar like Chen Zhiting, Zhu Jinglun would even blast him out.

Chen Zhiting's persuasion is complete nonsense at first hearing.

The urban working class, as a group freed from the shackles of the countryside, is indeed no different from the displaced people in the traditional concept.

In dynastic times, the treatment of displaced people was generally to choose land for resettlement, reintegrate them into the rural community, and bind them with land.

But now is the industrial age, no matter how you look at it, the productivity of these workers is much higher than that of the peasants, what Zhu Jinglun wants is to establish a basic security system for the workers, so that they will not have no means of living in the social crisis, and move towards the great revolutionary road, it can be said that Zhu Jinglun's consideration is counterproductive in the eyes of the revolutionaries, and he intends to buy off the workers with welfare.

But Chen Zhiting actually said that these workers should be relocated to the countryside and let them become farmers again, which is simply unreasonable, and Zhu Jinglun instantly felt that he had worked with such people for decades, which was simply a miracle.

But slowly listening to Chen Zhiting's statement, I actually heard some truth.

"A few years ago, the market in the city was sluggish, and many people in the city returned to their hometowns, and when the market in the city was good, they went back again. Therefore, when the market in the city is sluggish, the government should let these farmers return to their hometowns instead of giving them handouts. People stay in the city, there is no work, whether there is relief or not, sooner or later there will be problems. ”

Chen Zhiting's statement made Zhu Jinglun nod.

It is a fact that every economic crisis in recent years has been the rural area that accommodates the largest number of unemployed groups, and the traditional rural society that has not been completely destroyed has given the first generation of workers who entered the city a way back, and this phenomenon has often occurred in later generations, and the countryside is called the labor reservoir of the city, and it is also the largest buffer of the urban crisis.

Workers are unemployed in the city and can no longer survive, so they can live when they return to the countryside for several reasons: one is that they can rely on their clans and relatives for relief; One is that they still have land in the countryside, or one or two acres, and although they can't get rich from farming, they can't starve to death in times of economic crisis; One is that you have some savings while working in the city, and the cost of living in the city is too high, so you can enjoy the low cost of living when you return to the countryside, and you can survive the economic crisis.

In terms of social relations, some people go to the city individually, that is, the situation of migrant workers, and their brothers and sisters and even their wives and children are farming in the countryside; Some people are self-cultivated farming families, but they have not sold their land, and have lent or rented the land to others for farming, and they can't live in the city, and there is still a way back for the family to return to the countryside; There are also some people, when they are in the countryside, they plant the commons in the clan, and they can't survive in the city, and when they go back to the countryside, the clan will give them land.

This is very common, because yeoman farming is already common, and the clan phenomenon is also widespread.

The real pure tenant peasants who had no land in the countryside and went to the cities to become industrial workers were pure proletariat. But even such proletarian people really don't even have a single relative in the countryside, in fact, there are very few.

Therefore, in recent years, the countryside has become the biggest stabilizer of the city during the economic crisis.

"So, very few workers really can't find food. Of the hundred, there are few who have no work in the city, no relatives in the country, no clans, and so on. There are only a few people in charge of the government. ”

Chen Zhiting said, Zhu Jinglun felt more and more reasonable.

But he still had questions: "But what if the people in the city return to their hometowns, and their clansmen and fellow villagers are unwilling to give them land?" There is not enough land in the countryside. ”

Rural land is not enough to plant, this is the biggest motivation for rural people to enter the city, this motivation comes from the pressure of survival, not the pull of the rich life in the city, to put it mildly, in the early stage of industrialization, the life in the city is not worthy of envy.

Chen Zhiting said: "There are indeed these phenomena, and some families are not very harmonious. This has to let the government come forward and intercede with their patriarch, so that people can live, let alone their own relatives. ”

Zhu Jinglun said with a smile: "I'm afraid it's not enough to just intercede, you can legislate." The clan land was originally public land, which was left by their ancestors, and every clan member had the right to plant. In normal times, when there is an economic crisis, these people have the right to demand the re-division of land. ”

Zhu Jinglun secretly thought that this would solve the life of more than half of the urban workers during the economic crisis.

But the question is, "What about the land that is not a clan?" How do tenants who have entered the city go back? ”

There were also a large number of villages made up of pure landlords and tenants.

Chen Zhiting said: "To redefine the land production, as long as the people in the city return to their hometowns, the land will be divided and cultivated equally. ”

This is a solution, although it is possible to divide the land into smaller areas, and if there is more than one acre per person, it may be reduced to less than one acre, but in times of economic crisis, whether to choose to let some people starve to death, or choose to let everyone starve together, but everyone does not starve to death, this is not a problem.

Zhu Jinglun has another question: "What about outsiders, there are a large number of outsiders in big cities like Kowloon and Chiwan. ”

Chen Zhiting said: "Go back to your hometown!" ”

Zhu Jinglun waved his hand, this doesn't seem to be a problem, he only has a place of origin these years, but he doesn't have a household registration.

If we can send the rural people back to their places of origin through modern management capabilities, it can be said that during the economic crisis, the rural areas will be able to balance most of the social problems, and even if there are a few second- and third-generation urban workers who have completely lost their relationship with their origins, the cities will not be paralyzed during the economic crisis, and there will always be some job opportunities for them. No matter how big the economic crisis is, it is unlikely that the majority of the population will lose their jobs. And the countryside can accommodate the vast majority of people to go back, which is the great welfare of traditional Chinese society that has not been destroyed. 08 During the economic crisis, tens of millions of migrant workers returned to their hometowns and did not see how China was, which is something that no country in the West can do, no matter how advanced the welfare system is.

However, Zhu Jinglun's purpose is not only to solve the problem of social turmoil during the economic crisis, but his fundamental purpose is to enrich the people.

"How to enrich the people?"

Speaking of the issue of enriching the people, Chen Zhiting's eyes flashed, obviously his concept made him extremely sensitive to this issue.

But the problems he encountered were too complex.

sighed: "It's difficult! ”

After a long sigh, he said: "The grass people have been talking with the villagers for a long time over the years, and the people are suffering. Tenant farmers suffer the most. Although the government does not levy taxes, the rent is extremely heavy, and half of the property goes to the landlord. A small farmer has six or seven acres of arable land, and the income is only two or three acres, and a family of three can still make ends meet, but a family of four will starve. In the event of a famine, you will have to borrow money to survive, and you will be saddled with usury all year round. Although the government does not allow it, it is common to sell children and daughters. ”

Zhu Jinglun frowned, he knew that the government couldn't control the problem of selling sons and daughters, and the countryside had formed its own set of behaviors, circumventing legal prohibitions, and the law did not allow human trafficking, but a large number of child daughters-in-law appeared, and his family couldn't afford to raise them, so he put them in my family and gave them to my son as a daughter-in-law, and the government also had to take care of it?

These child daughters-in-law have worked for people since they were children, they were beaten and scolded, and they were married to others, which is not good to say, no different from the past descendants of large families, and it is not easy to manage, and it is considered to be a human traffic, it is true that many poor people cannot afford to raise their daughters, and it is better to be a child daughter-in-law to a large family than to drown a baby, or abandon.

"We must reduce rent and interest!"

Zhu Jinglun sighed, which reminded him of the historical rent and interest reduction movement, and the support of the people allowed an organization to start from the countryside and kill the Jiang dynasty, which shows how eager the people are to reduce rent.

Chen Zhiting sighed: "It's not easy to talk about. I have seen many landlords who live on the rent of their tenants. I asked them why not reduce the rent rate, and they said, "If there is no rent interest, why should they lend money?" If the landlords are not allowed to eat the rent, the common people will not be able to borrow grain in the disaster year, and in the end it will be the people who will suffer. ”

Chen Zhiting is telling the truth, because this has nothing to do with the Chen family, they are typical clans, not landlords, the Chen family's land is planted by the Chen family, most of them are public land, even if they are rented out, they are also rented to the same clan, the rent is not used for pleasure, the rent is also public property, in addition to being used to worship the ancestors, it is also used for the school and the good hall to support the orphans and widows.

"Do you have an idea?"

Zhu Jinglun asked, Chen Zhiting obviously knows the countryside better than him, and has been dormant in the countryside for more than ten years, compared to thinking about related issues.

Chen Zhiting said: "The only way to do this is to issue public debts. In ordinary years, tenants who encounter some minor disasters and illnesses cannot be allowed to borrow usury from the landlords. The government will give them low-interest public debts, which will be waived if they can be waived in the future, and reduced if they can. I'm just afraid that I won't be able to afford it financially. ”

Zhu Jinglun said: "Yes, hundreds of millions of farmers, no 10 million people have encountered something in any year. They all depend on finance, and the finances have to go bankrupt. ”

But this thing cannot be left out, Zhu Jinglun thought quickly in his mind, it is simple to exclude the landlords from the rural usury, but the reason why it is usury, not low-interest loans, from an economic point of view, is that they think that the risk is high, and it is impossible for tenants who are poor and white to borrow at low interest, and no bank will do this kind of business. So the landlords, who were able to control the tenants, became the big creditors, and they were guaranteed to recoup.

If we do this with public welfare, the huge cost is a consideration, and the financial support cannot be supported, and the risk that tens of millions of people may borrow every year must be reduced, which requires a huge amount of low-cost funds.

"Insurance!"

Zhu Jinglun said, what kind of capital cost is the lowest, of course, is the insurance fund. It is no wonder that in later generations, all countries have insuredized welfare, and no country has said that it will use finance to provide for the whole people.

China's current situation does not involve pension, because the concept of the common people is to raise children to prevent old age, and the government does not give them pensions, and they can't hate the government. What we should be concerned about now is that many people are poor due to illness and disaster, and it is a problem of poor wind resistance.

"Insurance? Who can I insure against? ”

Insurance Chen Zhiting is no stranger, there have long been many insurance companies in the society, such as Xu Run and other big compradors are engaged in water and fire insurance and other businesses, the first was run by foreigners, and now they are all run by Chinese capitalists, and many banks are doing it.

Zhu Jinglun believes that if the government gives them special privileges, some people are willing to do it, but the problem is that the risk of commercial insurance itself makes the government dare not trust them to hand it over. Once he went bankrupt, tens of millions of peasants suffered. So it has to be an insurance company that won't go bankrupt.

"Don't look for others, we'll do it ourselves!"

Zhu Jinglun envisioned that the government would come forward and the government would not go bankrupt, and the insurance company would not go bankrupt, nor would it engage in risky commercial investments.

Chen Zhiting sighed: "But tenants can't afford insurance? ”

Zhu Jinglun said: "It's not a problem. How many tenants there are. Among the peasants, there is no land of their own, there is no public land to cultivate, and the tenants who only rent the landlord's land are afraid that only one or two out of ten people are afraid of it. It was more than enough for ten peasants to bear the premiums of one or two tenants. Moreover, once the insurance is done, there is no need to worry about the landlord not lending in the disaster year, and the income from rent reduction and interest reduction can also be put into the insurance. ”

Zhu Jinglun already felt that he had forced the big landlords to reduce rents and interest rates, so in addition to returning some of the reduced rent to the tenants, he planned to put most of them into the insurance fund to prevent these tenants from encountering famine.

At this point, Zhu Jinglun's rural policy had been made clear, that is, to expropriate resources from rent-eating rentier landlords and redistribute them to the poorest tenant farmers. This is unfair to the big landlords, their land is not for nothing, but their struggle or the struggle of their ancestors, for example, the Wu Chongyao family also has a huge estate in the countryside, and they have obtained wealth through business. Is it fair to them to limit the growth of their wealth now?

This is the greatest injustice in the concept of the sanctity of private property advocated by the West, especially Britain and the United States, but for millions of poor people, who has thought about them. To put it bluntly, this is still a question of fairness for a small number of people and fairness for the majority, and on this issue, Zhu Jinglun resolutely considers the problem on the side of the majority of people.

Chen Zhiting said: "I don't know what this insurance covers? ”

Zhu Jinglun said: "The protection is that the widows and orphans have no one to provide for the elderly, the protection is that the orphans and the poor cannot afford to see a doctor, and the protection is that the poor cannot afford to eat." ”

Chen Zhiting was stunned: "Isn't this just a good hall?" ”

Zhu Jinglun smiled: "You can think of it as a large benevolent hall. But unlike Shantang, Shantang is run by some good people, and relief is arbitrary, and they have the final say. But rural insurance is different, it has to have strict regulations, and it has to benefit those who really need it. And now we are not helping the poor, not saving the suffering, now we can only save the dead. Let those who can't survive live, so only the poorest and most miserable can be saved. ”

In Zhu Jinglun's idea, he only needs to let one-tenth of the tenant farmers at the bottom of society be able to live without selling their children and daughters, so that their basic life is on par with those yeoman farmers, they can eat enough, and they can tear a few feet of cloth to make clothes every year. This is the most basic redistribution.

As for the higher level, we have to wait for the system to be established and develop slowly.

"The Emperor Shengming!"

Chen Zhiting felt that he didn't know what to say except for saying these few words, and he was faintly excited in his heart, what a great achievement it was to do it.

"Lord Chen, we have finished talking about the issue of saving the people. It's time to talk about enriching the people! ”

Helping the poor is what Chen Zhiting is most concerned about, but Zhu Jinglun believes that it is only the most basic, and it is not worthy of pride to do it, and it is a shame for the ruler to fail to do it.

He wants to carry out wealth redistribution, not only to let the poorest people live, but to make the lives of the vast majority of people better, so that the current society in which the vast majority of people are poor will become a middle-income society.