"A certain tax contractor has the exclusive right to collect taxes in a province, there is no peer to compete with him, he can set an uncapped tax rate according to his own wishes, except for a promise to pay a small part of the government's taxes, the rest is all his own, stimulated by monopoly privileges, the tax contractor certainly has the incentive to recruit mercenaries to form an armed tax police, use violent means to oppress the residents in the jurisdiction, and force the taxpayer to hand over the last copper plate!"

Bishop Claude made a generous statement denouncing the evils of the times.

"Imagine, if the government abolishes the monopoly of tax package, grants the right to package tax in one province to a number of tax companies, and allows people to voluntarily choose to pay taxes to a certain tax company, thereby provoking competition in the tax package industry and forcing them to lower the tax rate to attract more people to come to pay taxes, such a system reform will undoubtedly reduce people's taxes and increase fiscal revenue. Bishop Claude smiled coldly, "Did you really not think of it, or did you pretend that such an option does not exist!" ”

Roland couldn't help but want to applaud Claude again. This bishop is not only the "chief economist" of the Holy See, but also a special genius!

Due to his professional orientation, Roland was very interested in the tax package system in ancient and modern China and foreign countries on the university campus before the crossing, and read a lot of relevant materials under the guidance of his supervisor, including papers published in top international journals. After traveling to the world of Vares, and having the opportunity to put his theory of the national economy into practice in the Far East, Roland felt more and more that "what is obtained on paper is ultimately shallow", and that the "tax system" is far from being as simple as the public thinks.

There are both bad and good sides to the tax package system. When a country's central government is weak enough to rule effectively at the grassroots level, or unwilling to establish a strong centralized government out of democratic preferences, then the government-led tax collection must be inefficient; Conversely, outsourcing tax collection to the private sector, whether you call it a "tax package" or a "government purchase of social services", is one thing and more efficient.

However, efficiency always comes at a price, and the efficiency of the tax package system needs to come at the cost of exploitation by the people, and the people will rise up to rebel when they are squeezed to the limit, and in the end the government will bear the consequences of the "rebellion". From this point of view, it is clear that the traditional tax package system is flawed, and the fact that the tax package right is actually similar to an "option", with limited obligations and no upper limit on returns, contains great unfairness and needs to be reformed.

Bishop Claude's reform strategy for the tax package system is exactly what Roland wants: the government will eliminate the monopoly of tax contractors, introduce market competition, and allow multiple tax agencies to contract taxes in the same area and set their own tax rates. Out of rationality, taxpayers will inevitably choose to pay taxes to the tax-inclusive agency with a lower tax rate. In a highly competitive environment, various tax-inclusive agencies in the same region have to reduce their tax rates in order to win more customers in order to make small profits and quick turnover. According to the theory of market supply and demand, it is not difficult to analyze that the tax rate in equilibrium will be compressed to a minimum, and the result will be that the burden on taxpayers will be reduced, the state fiscal revenue will increase, and the tax contractors will lose their monopoly rights and will not be able to enjoy excess profits as they are now, and can only earn their share of the money according to the laws of the market. This will hurt the income of the tax contractor, but it will also reduce the stigma and moral pressure they are subjected to.

Roland hoped that Bishop Claude's topic would lead to a more in-depth discussion, but unfortunately disappointed him, because the reformers and conservatives present were not interested in reforming the tax system, and Claude himself only used this "brain hole" as an introduction, and quickly diverted his firepower, denouncing the great damage caused to the country by the twin brothers of "mercantilism" and "monopoly privilege".

When a government believes in "mercantilism," it is inevitable that it will interfere too much in the economic activities of all walks of life, and the concentrated manifestation of administrative interference is to grant someone or a certain enterprise the exclusive right to operate, and it is precisely by using this privilege to monopolize the industry in which the wealthy merchant class is located, so as to make huge profits.

"In peacetime, the wealthy businessmen monopolized all the outsourcing business of the government, and the large-scale construction projects of public buildings, roads and bridges, sewer pipes, post roads, garden nurseries, square theaters and other large-scale construction projects in the Holy City Special Zone and various provinces were all contracted to those businessmen who had close ties with the competent bureaucracy, and the latter even disdained to personally preside over the construction of the project. What is the embodiment of Mr. Fogel's so-called 'diligence' and 'wisdom'?! ”

And when the country is facing war, it is a good time for profiteers to make a lot of money! They sharpened their heads to lobby and bribe high-ranking government officials, so as to obtain the exclusive right to contract logistics materials for the troops, supply the army with food, clothing, horses, and weapons at high prices, and then buy war spoils from the hands of the government, generals, and soldiers at low prices. ”

While denouncing the wealthy merchant class for taking advantage of their monopoly privileges to make a fortune, Bishop Claude did not ignore their other major crime, land annexation.

"The huge profits made by the wealthy through taxation, lending, construction, and trade monopolies, not satisfied with merely possession of gold, silver, and jewelry, naturally extended the claws of greed to the land and property."

"In order to seize land from its original owners, the merchants devised insidious traps, first appearing as charity, and going around the countryside, encouraging the simple-minded rural landlords to take out loans for the cultivation of wasteland, the purchase of ploughing horses, the improvement of the land, the maintenance of mills and water conservancy facilities, and the lenders to share in the benefits of the agricultural harvest if the landlords' reclamation plans went well; On the contrary, if the year is bad and the landlord's expenditure does not get the expected return, so that he cannot repay the loan in time, the lender will peel off the disguise of charity, reveal the true face of greed, and charge a high late fee to the landlord who cannot repay the loan on time, so that the other party's situation is even worse, and the arrears plus compound interest continue to surge like a snowball, and soon become a mountain that crushes the landlord. ”

"Year after year, countless small and medium-sized landowners were forced to sell their land and become destitute under the pressure of usury, and the land was constantly concentrated in the hands of those wealthy merchants who started with lending!"

Bishop Claude publicly exposed the use of money by the capitalist group as a means of land annexation, and then turned the finger at the most serious class division among the many social problems caused by land annexation.