In fact, it was not only the poor at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but also the entire Ming Dynasty that was grasping the financial revenue, because there were problems with the tax system established when the Ming Dynasty was established, and a series of later financial reforms were just tinkering with the original system.

Zhu Yuanzhang's system, in short, is "demarcating the land into a prison". Each household has a fixed household registration that cannot be easily changed, mainly private households, and they have to pay land taxes and serve as errand workers. The second is the military household, which has to serve in the military, and being a soldier is to serve the country on a special errand and to be in charge of tuntian. The third is the stove household, which is responsible for boiling salt and paying salt tax. There are also doctors, craftsmen, fishermen, and so on. The ideal society designed by Zhu Yuanzhang is that everyone has a fixed occupation, and the father dies and the son and the brother ends up, and it has been maintained from generation to generation. There is a lijia system above the households, and one hundred and ten households are one li. There is a guard house above the military household. There is a salt pan in the stove household. The government collects taxes, taking private households as an example, as long as the summer and autumn grain payable each year is determined in each county according to the number of households, fields, etc. (field quality, harvest), and recorded in the yellow book. It is re-inventoried every 10 years and re-registered. As long as the local officials are attentive and the people are obedient, there will be no problem with fiscal revenue.

But it is impossible for society not to develop, and it is impossible for people to do only one thing in their lives. And over time, the gap between the rich and the poor will appear. So there will be the buying and selling of fields. Originally, the sale of land had to be registered with the government to clarify the taxpayer. But this system is not guaranteed, and some people take advantage of loopholes, and slowly they do not know who is responsible for taxing this field. A county has a large area and a large population, but there are only a dozen officials, and it is impossible to completely control it, and it is impossible to collect taxes if you want to. Some smart people even bought Lixu, saying that the levee had collapsed and their fields had been washed away by water, so that the fields would no longer have to be taxed. The people in the government often did not ask, and apportioned the taxes that should have been paid to other fields. Here's an example. A certain county has 100 acres of land, and it has to collect 100 stone of grain, that is, 1 stone of grain per mu. Someone once said that his family's 10 acres of land had been washed away, so there were only 90 acres of land left to pay taxes. However, the government still requires the county to pay 100 stone of grain every year, so more than 1 stone of grain must be paid per mu of land. Many people can't stand such a heavy land tax, or run away, or occupy the land. Later, the land tax became less and less collectible.

The situation is similar in the Tuntian of the Guard. Tuntian was supposed to be the property of the state, but by the time of Yingzong, it basically became private property. No one knows how much land to plant, how much tax to pay, and a lot of land has been seized by military officers. This is land annexation. The officers also withheld their salaries, and many military families ran away because they couldn't bear it. As for the officers, they not only took the land, but also used the surplus money to do business, open brothels, and smuggle at sea.

The same goes for salt taxes. The taxes imposed on the salt farmers were too heavy, and many people ran away, and some went directly to the sea to become pirates. When he became a pirate, he went ashore to rob everywhere. In fact, the entire coastal area of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong in the Ming Dynasty was not peaceful, but the Jiajing period fought against the Japanese invaders, resulting in a historical narrative of sudden coastal turmoil during the Jiajing period. Therefore, the stove households along the coast cannot afford to pay taxes.

Slowly, the government was able to control less and less land, not to mention Guangdong and Guizhou, which were beyond the reach of the emperor, and the north and south were in a similar situation, so the finances of the entire Ming Empire became more and more embarrassed.

Therefore, in order to increase revenue, various items are constantly added, and there are hundreds of tax items in a county, and from time to time they go to the people to loot them. Many of the items that were not originally prescribed were frequently compiled by the officials for the sake of corruption, and the burden on the people was even heavier.

There were many officials who tried to carry out reforms, and this process began during the Xuande period. It has always been a small repair for local officials, and in the end, Zhang Juzheng has implemented a whip law to legitimize the reform. The main results of the whip law were not to reduce the burden on the peasants, nor did it increase the government's revenue, but the main results were: First, the existing items were grouped into one item and apportioned according to the amount of land in each county. The second is to convert the servants into silver taels and distribute them to the fields. In this way, the people will no longer have to serve the state, but only need to pay taxes. The significance of this shift is significant. The third is to clarify the use of silver as a means of settlement, and since then the treasury has been able to carry out the budget. In the past, the state lived within its means, and the people had to give whatever the country wanted. Now it is within the means of living, the money paid by the people is fixed, and the state can only invest according to the money it collects. If you are interested in the history of the Ming Dynasty and a whip method, please see Liang Fangzhong's "A Whip Law".

Zhang Juzheng's reform did not make the financial system of the Ming Dynasty completely improved, but only made the system no longer bad. It's a pity that by the end of Wanli, there were three major levies, and then there were three salaries to be added, so we had to continue to pay on the basis of the original taxes. Originally, it was just a temporary tax item, but I didn't expect that in the end, Li Zicheng couldn't pay it, and he couldn't hold the Shanhaiguan, and the Ming Dynasty perished.

So why is Mo so poor? It's all because Zhu Yuanzhang took it for granted at the beginning, he thought that he could build an ideal society in which both the rich and the poor were equal, but within a few decades the system was completely broken. In retrospect, the historical process of this dynasty has been very similar so far.