Daming salt politics has always been a chronic disease.

Before the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, it was the main financial income of the central court.

However, the cost of this major fiscal revenue is that the price of salt remains high, and the people have difficulty eating salt, resulting in a decline in the nutritional level of the people in the whole country.

This is not conducive to the long-term genetic development of a nation.

Besides.

Daming Salt Administration's support policy for salt-producing stove households is also getting worse and worse.

As a result, the output and quality of official salt have dropped sharply.

Now it has reverted to the previous Kaizhong method.

It is just to reduce the transportation pressure for military warfare, but these transportation pressures will eventually be apportioned to the price of salt, increasing the burden on the people.

The salt tax reform carried out by Zhu Youzhen's cabinet chief assistant Gao Hongtu was actually half of the government's profits, and the salt merchants gave up most of the profits, reducing the price of salt to a level that ordinary people could afford.

The first thing the government wants to do is to abolish the opening of the law again, and return to the previous system of paying for salt, but reducing the price of salt.

So.

It can reduce the cost price of salt.

But at the same time, the government has raised the floor price of salt for stove households, so that the government can reduce the price difference, but it can benefit the stove people.

The government will also provide a reference price range that people can afford to buy, prohibiting salt merchants from raising the price of salt, so as to avoid the phenomenon of pouring salt into the sea rather than selling.

In this way, salt merchants will no longer be able to make a lot of money from selling salt.

The market space for smugglers who rely on the withdrawal of official salt and the sale of smuggled salt will also be squeezed.

Zhu Youjian asked Gao Hongtu to carry out the salt policy reform, which was based on the current salt farm area of the Ming Dynasty, and established a number of salt companies.

Abolish the salt industry transshipment envoy and the salt inspection imperial history and other institutions.

That is, to reduce the government's management of salt production.

The state-owned salt company is responsible for recruiting stove households for production and operation, and then the state-owned salt company distributes salt merchants from all over the country for sale.

And these state-owned salt companies are equivalent to the state-run salt merchants of the Ming Dynasty.

They increase profits in terms of increasing salt production and reducing salt costs.

The salt merchants in charge of sales only need to have a business license to order salt from local salt companies and send it to all parts of the country for sale.

At the same time, the Ministry of Household established the Salt Administration Department, that is, the Salt Industry Corporation.

The Salt Administration Department regulates the price of salt and the amount of salt produced, and cracks down on counterfeit salt dealers.

The head of the state-owned salt company is appointed by the Department of Salt Administration and does not need to go through the cabinet.

It's different from before.

In this way, the salt industry has a great deal of independence.

The difference between the state-owned salt company and the previous transshipment envoy is that it is responsible for both production and sales, and the salt profits obtained can be distributed by itself, and there is no need to send them to the capital.

This is equivalent to the imperial court giving up this part of the salt profit, and this part of the salt profit can be used to improve the treatment of the stove households and stimulate the enthusiasm of the stove households to produce salt, so as to increase the salt production, and have sufficient money to improve the process.

Distributors, i.e., salt merchants who wholesale salt from the state-owned salt company, do not have to go to the army to exchange salt, as they did before, but order salt directly from the state-owned salt company and then sell the salt at the reference price set by the salt administration.

As a result, although many salt merchants have been relieved of the burden of transporting grain, they have also lost the benefit of selling salt at a high price.

After that, the number of salt merchants on the rich side will definitely be greatly reduced.

The government can only collect salt taxes from state-owned salt companies and salt distributors for revenue from the salt industry.

But with the lower price of salt, the government should not pay too much money for these salt merchants to be profitable.

In addition, most of the people in charge of the state-owned salt company and the salt distributors must be people with ties to the government, so it is natural that the household officials who set the tax will not set the tax too high and make it unprofitable for their relatives.

The current Gao Hongtu reform of the salt administration is to transform his own family, relatives, and well-connected salt merchants into state-owned salt companies, and the major salt farms in Daming are responsible for salt production under the contract of the salt administration sub-departments of various provinces.

In this way, most of the salt merchants who were deprived of the profits of the salt industry had no choice but to be forced to transform or transfer their hatred to Gao Hongtu and other civilian officials.

The Guards also lost the salt profits they had gained from the salt introduction, but because Zhu Youzhen ordered the governors of all theaters to cooperate with the salt political reform, the Guards did not make any trouble.

After all, these governors still listen to Zhu Youzhen, and no one knows whether these state-owned salt companies and bulk salt distributors have anything to do with them.

In the end, it was the imperial court and most of the salt merchants who had no official relationship with the government that lost money.

Zhu Youzhen could make up for the losses of the imperial court by expanding the scale of the domestic commodity economy and further opening up the maritime market, as well as plundering overseas markets.

Most salt merchants can also use this reform to force these merchants to use their capital and business means to other industries to increase the economic scale of other industries.

Zhu Youzhen's ultimate goal is to reduce the burden on the common people, let the people use more income to buy non-food products, reduce the Engel coefficient, and improve the quality of life of the people in the Ming Dynasty.

With the cancellation of a large number of loans and road introduction system by the central bank of the Ming Dynasty and the opening of commercial ports such as Songjiang, Ningbo, Quanzhou and Guangzhou along the coast, the rapid development of the commodity economy in the Ming Dynasty, coupled with the increase in jobs brought about by the ordnance institute and the encouragement of the powerful to devote themselves to the industrial field and large-scale engineering construction, the income of the people of Daming has increased several times.

However, due to the decline in grain production and the increase in currency issuance due to the decrease in self-cultivated farmers, as well as the inflow of a large amount of silver, the increase in inflation, the high price level and the sharp rise in salt prices brought about by the resumption of opening China and France, the cost of living of the Ming people is still very high.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen can now give up salt profits, which can improve the quality of life of the people, promote them to transfer more wealth to education consumption and entertainment consumption, or can pursue better taste, pursue luxury goods, promote the emergence of luxury brands, and further promote commercial development.

In short, it's a virtuous circle.

As long as the imperial court controls the commercial tax, it can make profits in other aspects to promote commercial development, as long as the commercial development, the imperial court tax revenue will not decrease but increase, and the people's living standards will also improve.

This is because the pursuit of profit in business is fundamentally based on improving productivity and increasing returns, which increases the total wealth of society.

It is already difficult to increase productivity in traditional agriculture, unless a hybrid rice is developed now to increase the yield per mu to several thousand catties, but this is obviously impossible.

Even if we want to provide agricultural output through chemical fertilizers and mechanized farming in the future, we must first promote the development of industry and commerce.

With the stabilization of the domestic situation and the eradication of a large number of big bureaucrats, the repossession of the land of the feudal kings, and the encouragement of reclamation measures, the number of yeoman farmers now under the control of the Huangzhuang and the direct management of the household department increased considerably, and the development of industry also made great strides, coupled with the economic stimulus brought by the large amount of money, the social production capacity of the Ming Empire reached an unprecedented high.

The Northern Expedition is currently the main way to consume the productive capacity of society, and countless agricultural and industrial products will be consumed through the situation of war, thus bringing about the unity of civilization and promoting the benign development of history.

Both peasants and workers, as well as craftsmen and low-level merchants, needed war.

Otherwise, the millions of craftsmen of the Daming Armory would not have participated in the demonstration.

This is also the fundamental reason for the failure of the civilian clique to resist the Northern Expedition.

The Ming Dynasty has changed, and it is no longer exactly the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy.

(End of chapter)