Yang Fan couldn't help but be amazed as he looked at the newspaper. There were no fools in this world.

It's all fucking, pretending to be confused when you understand.

Perhaps some of the good people in this world are confused. However, none of the bad people are confused. They still do it even though they know how bad the things they do are.

Now the emperor is forced to do something urgent and sends out the strongest group of royal literati to submit to the Su newspaper to refute the ridiculous remarks of the rebellious parties in Jiangnan.

The article Yang Fan is reading now is an article with a very sharp level.

The author disdains to use a pseudonym and claims that what he says can be discussed with the world, so why bother to hide his head and reveal his tail?

Yang Fan first read the article and was shocked, and he actually hit the nail on the head. He thought it was a cat and a dog. When he saw the signature, he actually was Bi Ziyan, the Minister of Revenue.

The article begins with a clear understanding that the root cause of the turmoil in today's Ming Dynasty is the financial difficulties of the court.

How to train troops without money, how to defend against the enemy without money.

Why did the Ming Dynasty have no money? Because the gentry annexed land, destroying the tax base of self-cultivated farmers?

This has led to a rapid decline in the population that bears tax burdens, and the taxes that can be collected are getting fewer and fewer.

At the same time, the gentry also operates industry and commerce, and does not pay taxes. They also occupy post stations and evade commercial taxes. Under their competition, the industry and commerce run by private people gradually went bankrupt. Naturally, the commercial tax could not be collected. This year, the more new taxes were actually fined by various provinces.

Nowadays, all the good lands in the thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty were occupied by civil servants. Most of the lands in the middle are relatives of civil servants and clans, and only the lands in the lower fields are owned by the people.

The civil servants did not pay taxes on their land, nor did their clans pay taxes. This led to the people with few lands being fully taxed and corveted. The root cause of the current chaos is actually the responsibility lies with the gentry.

Below are lists various bloody conflicts caused by local civil servants, their clans, and family slaves forcing land to buy land, as well as their evil deeds of monopolizing lawsuits, framing the people, and seizing their land.

It also lists the financial data of the imperial court from the Hongwu period to the Chongzhen period.

Bi Ziyan pointed out that the tax problem of the Ming Dynasty was the most serious among the dynasties of all dynasties.

During the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, taxes were 23 million stones of rice and 4.7 million stones of wheat.

During the Zhizhengde period, tax revenue dropped to 22 million stones of rice and 4.62 million stones of wheat.

During the Jiajing period, it dropped to 18 million stones of rice and 4.62 million stones of wheat, equivalent to 9 million taels of silver. In the 30th year of Jiajing, military expenditure was 5.25 million taels of silver, salary, and construction of 8 million taels of silver, totaling more than 13 million.

By the Longqing period, tax revenue was only enough to maintain the expenses of the first three months each year, and money was required for the next nine months. (The fundamental reason for the opening of Longqing was financial difficulties.)

After Chongzhen took over, the tax collection declined. The best thing was the first year of Chongzhen, which decreased every year after that.

Bi Ziyan angrily wrote that nowadays, is it because the tax revenue of the imperial court is very high?

In fact, it is not high at all, the tax rate of the court is very low.

The average collection of 0.0344 stones per mu, and only one stone is collected for about 30 mu.

Official land collects 0.053 stones and private land collects 0.0335 stones. Others vary according to the nature of the land.

Why did such a low tax cause refugees to appear everywhere in the six northern provinces?

That was because the gentry had annexed a large amount of land and did not pay taxes, so they spread the tax on self-cultivated farmers. The tax burden of self-cultivated farmers was dozens of times that of the court.

When Yang Fan saw this, he couldn't help but sigh, Lao Bi is really a gentleman, and he really dares to speak.

The gentry of the world annexed land and plundered tomorrow's fig leaf and exposed it to the sun.

Lao Bi's identity was there. He was the head of the Ming Dynasty's finance. He clearly listed various data and was very authoritative. It caused a huge sensation.

People in the world never knew that the Chongzhen Dynasty's tax revenue was less than one-fifth of that of the Hongwu Dynasty. This was the reason.

As soon as Lao Bi's article was released, it immediately aroused the discussions among the Thirteen Provinces.

Many farmers who don’t know how to read also listened to the scholars who read newspapers in tea stalls and restaurants in the city and learned these inside stories. The fields were talking about the evil deeds of gentry.

For a time, public opinion flipped, from talking about the emperor to starting to accuse the gentry.

Now that the Soviet newspapers have become popular, many restaurants and entertainment venues have hired poor scholars to read newspapers. Because this kind of thing called newspapers is all-encompassing, from local prices to gossip news, from national events to market news, it is really interesting.

It has become a fashion to listen to newspapers while eating, drinking tea. Even in places where crowds gather at large markets, at the gates of the city, there are poor scholars who read newspapers to people around them.

Like the artist, after reading, I earned my income by rewarding the onlookers.

Yang Fan smiled and said, "What Lao Bi said is true. The gentry is probably going to be ruled by thousands of people. I didn't expect that Your Majesty has this ability, and he can adapt to new things so quickly and fight a public opinion war with civil servants."

The little girl curled her lips and said, "This is just a part of the fact. Master, you read this newspaper, which is the rebuttal of the next issue. They are also capable, so they directly refuted Bi Ziyan."

Yang Fan took the newspaper with great interest and was immediately happy.

The author of this article is named Lengyan Jian Tianxia. At the beginning, he asked, if the issue of refugees is really caused by the annexation of land by the gentry. Then, if the land is annexed, is it based on the principle that scarcity is precious, and the price will increase due to the increase in acquisitions.

However, in reality, the land of the Ming Dynasty has fallen to a situation where almost no one cares about it.

why is that!

Why does land annexation cause a plummeting land price?

In many places, self-cultivated farmers want to give their land to others for free, but no one wants it.

Why is this! Isn’t this a strange thing?

Because it was not the gentry who caused the farmers to go bankrupt, but the court and the emperor.

Because since ancient times, taxes have been tied to population (Di Tax) and land. If you have land, you will ask you to collect taxes. The taxes in the imperial court are indeed low, but various local levies and taxes increase benefits of a hundred times the statutory tax.

Then, he gave an example of a distant relative in Suzhou.

His family has ten acres of land. If the taxes are strictly collected according to the court's regulations, the yield per mu in Jiangnan will be high, and the family will live a good life. However, extra-legal taxes account for more than 950%.

In fact, the output is not enough to pay for a year, and it is thirty times in various places.

In the end, he had to sell the land, use the money for ten acres of land as a deposit, and rent a hundred acres of land from the gentry.

Although he had to pay 50% of the rent, he did not need to pay taxes or perform corvee service.

The remaining income is several times more than growing ten acres of land by yourself.

The people sold land and invested in gentry because they were forced by the government. It was the exploitation of the court and the emperor that led to their bankruptcy.

Not only did the gentry not only have no mistakes, but also actually protected the people and was very kind to the people.

At least it gives the helpless people the right to choose.

Yang Fan was amazed that this person was so weird that he could actually whiten the gentry to this extent.
Chapter completed!