In this era, the gap between the rich and the poor is not at all as high as the bourgeois-proletarian contradictions that broke out at the end of the 19th century, so why, just a little increase in the tax rate of the rich, there will be such a qualitative increase in income? Si Nan Pei was also quite confused, but after researching and dealing with some practices in Lelan City at the bottom, Si Nan Pei's heart was as clear as a mirror.

Again, this is an era of very low productivity, and ordinary people, including the extremely poor and middle-income people, still have to invest most of their income, or even all of their income, in the purchase of means of production, in other words, they have to use all their income to buy food and clothing, and they can't squeeze much oil and water at all, as long as the tax rate is raised a little, they have to rise up against the rulers, because they live on such a meager income. Not only the West, but also the Celestial Empire. For example, in the late Ming Dynasty, if the government raised the agricultural tax rate to one-fifteenth, it would lead to a popular uprising -- although there were also factors of landlord oppression and bureaucratic corruption, ordinary people really did not have much money to pay.

The middle class, which does not have many people, is because the population base is too small, and even if some money can be collected, it is very small from a macro perspective. The middle class is not a middle-income earner in the sense of the general public, but a group of wealthy people who are less than the top and more than the bottom, such as doctors, lawyers, or university professors. In the 21st century, this is certainly a group of significant forces, but there are far too few of them here......

If you want to increase your income, only the rich can make up your mind. It is not unreasonable that the ancient Celestial Empire liked to slaughter merchants as fat sheep. The rich can be easily divided into two parts - rulers and non-rulers. In a sense, the aristocracy and landlord intellectuals were part of the rulers, and the emperors of the Celestial Empire liked to talk about "sharing the world with the scholars". This is also true. These oriental intellectuals, like the aristocracy, were the base of the regime. And the merchant is not. In both the East and the West, where the productive forces have not developed by leaps and bounds, and where the commodity economy is lagging behind, the merchants belong to a class that can be oppressed by the will, both in the East and in the West. On Earth, of course. This is expressed in the West as an anti-Semitic tradition. In fact, the Knights Templar, who had degenerated into merchants, could also see what happened to them......

If you want to extract profits, of course, you have to start from businessmen. This is an inevitable support for the operation of a medieval government.

But in the old days, these rich people were in power, and it was absolutely impossible to pluck the hair from them. Didn't they launch a riot and take control of the city for their own interests? If they had to sacrifice their own interests for the development of the city, what kind of intensity did they have to riot in the first place? It can be said that they rioted and seized power for their own interests. They want to ask Theresa to come back and clean up the mess. Or for their own benefit. Of course, the last thing has been proven to be a fool's errand...... The contradiction between the feudal ruling class and the bourgeoisie was still quite enormous.

Everything the merchants did was for their own benefit, which can be seen in the cooking system of Lelan City.

This is quite obvious. Although the city of Lelan popularized the right to vote to the common people in the past, allowing the commoners who did not have much property to choose their own spokesperson, and created a dish that was rare in this era, some of the doors in it still could not avoid the shackles of the times - in fact, not only in this era. The same is true on Earth.

That is, while civilians are able to choose their own spokesperson. They themselves are not in a position to act as spokespersons for a group...... No matter what kind of official position you hold or become a member of parliament, you are limited by property qualifications. This restriction on property qualifications was an excellent means of ensuring that merchants could rule the city and protect their interests. And the vote count is also different from the 21st century earth - unlike the modern society where every citizen has the same number of votes. Although the city of Lelan also gave the poor the right to vote, they practiced a wealth-weighted system - that is, the richer the more powerful, and one person could hold the votes of a few dozen people, just like the distinction between urban and rural areas in the old days of the New Celestial Empire. The voting power of one city person is equivalent to that of several village people.

It can be said without hesitation that this Lelan city is a paradise for the rich and a hell for the poor. In their eyes, this is even the expression of civilization - if not to say that civilization and barbarism are relative, in Si Nanpei's view, this belongs to the category of barbarians. It also further reduced Sinampe's perception of the merchant class in Lelan City. People like Varangi who betrayed their own class are very few after all. What's more, Varangie is also acting for his own interests - the macro analysis of society as a whole cannot be applied to the individual, and the interests of each person will be different from others.

On Earth, wealth restrictions, wealth weighting, and the like were still quite common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also an era when social contradictions were extremely prominent, and it is no wonder that many patriots who had gone abroad would make bold statements about the inevitable collapse of Western civilization.

Sinan Pei sees this very clearly. Although he is a time-traveler, even a modern man who has planted red ideas in his head - although on the surface not many people care about his predecessors such as Ma Enles, Mao and other communist predecessors, but the subtle influence of education still exists - but he is now the lover of a feudal ruler...... No, he has also become a feudal ruler himself, so of course Sinan Pei, who was decided by his ass, will no longer care about those messy things. No outside force could stop him in suppressing the merchant class, and some were even happy to see him "destroy the Great Wall".

For the sake of his sister-in-law, for the sake of his offspring, he doesn't mind being a villain!

In the distant city of Pali, in the warm study, Christina holds a cup in both hands and savores the tea leaves that she has bought with great difficulty. Although in the eyes of her, a young lady who is accustomed to drinking high-end tea, this kind of inferior tea is unbearable, but in the absence of other options, she still can't let go of this habit that she has developed since childhood.

Opposite her sat the crown prince of Caledonia, Edward.

"Really, why are you becoming more and more indecisive, more and more like the 'soft rice eater'. During the chat, Christina said casually.

"Aha, when the two of us first met, didn't you say that I was very similar to Si at that time?"

"At that time......" (To be continued......