At the end of the 22nd year of Chongzhen, the treasury income of the imperial court had reached more than 80 million taels.

Compared with the past, the main tax growth comes from the following two aspects:

First, the errands of verifying the exemption and tax exemption of officials and gentry and gentry taxes represented by Zhang Pu have expanded to the whole country. The cleared land tax, tax arrears and taxes calculated by labor have increased by more than ten times compared with before the beginning. It can be seen that these officials and gentry lie on the court to suck blood.

As the saying goes, cutting off money is like killing a parent. As long as adults basically know this.

When Zhang Pu and others were ordered to do this job, they did not hesitate to self-harm and wanted to turn it off. This shows the difficulty of verifying the excuses of officials and gentry and urge taxes.

Even though Zhang Pu was originally the leader of the Fushe and the representative of the officials and gentry, once he did this job, he was immediately suppressed by the officials and gentry. Later, he even acted to eliminate his body, and wanted to slander Zhang Pu for causing civil unrest. Even if he was not beaten to death, he would definitely be dismissed from office.

There is a good example of similar things, which is Liu Mao, who proposed to Emperor Chongzhen to demolish the post station and relieve the financial pressure of the court.

At that time, he reported: "Today, Xiazhou County is trapped in about seven or eight out of ten of the post stations, while only two out of ten of the post stations are used for official affairs, and eight out of ten of the post stations are used for private affairs."

Moreover, at that time, Liu Mao's strategy was not to dismantle all the stations, and strictly use them, cutting off the hands reaching the stations, which caused a great rebound.

When Liu Mao did this, the officials and gentry and even their families went out to eat, live and travel for free at the inn. They were gone; in those places, they used the post station to enslave people from all over the country and gained benefits; in addition, local governments often used the post station to float in the name of the post station to make no benefits; in this way, many parasites were damaged, but the court and ordinary people could get benefits.

So, officials rose up and attacked him. Emperor Chongzhen at that time did not come from later generations, nor did he have golden fingers like eavesdropping systems, which led to Liu Mao's miserable end. Even after his death, he had to bear a reputation, which means he died, and was killed by his demolition station.

Zhang Pu, the verification of the exemption of officials and gentry and the urge to pay taxes, can be said to harm the interests of the entire officialdom than what Liu Mao did. He is no matter how capable he is, with the three officials becoming tigers, he may end up even more miserable than Liu Mao.

However, Emperor Chongzhen is no longer the original Emperor Chongzhen. It not only comes from later generations, but also has a system of eavesdropping to deal with the counterattacks of officials and gentry with tough means. Not only did Qian Qianyi, known as the leader of the Jiangnan literary world, sentenced him to death for his rebellion, but he was also demoted and punished more than 100 local officials to support and promote Zhang Pu to continue his responsibilities.

It was also a pity that Emperor Chongzhen won every battle and expanded his territory. His prestige was higher than the other day, giving Zhang Pu and others the greatest support, thus completing the policy of verifying the exemption and exemption of officials and gentry and urging taxes across the country.

After spending so much effort to promote it, the rewards will naturally be very high. Not only did the imperial court achieve accurate accuracy in the country's land, but the silver from land taxes and labor that should be collected was never owed, and it gave great support to the imperial court's finances.

The second major part of the treasury income in the imperial court was the war.

Most of the wars in recent years have achieved success in expanding territory at a very small cost. I won’t mention the seizures, and after the great trade demand after the successful expansion of territory, I don’t know how much commercial tax the imperial court collected. The routes that contributed the most commercial tax were Jiangnan to Nanyang, Annan and Donggo.

It can be foreseen that in the future, with the enrichment of the population of Liaodong and Hetao Plain, it will also drive trade in the north.

Of course, the Ming Dynasty is now peaceful and peaceful, and there is no more treacherous chaos, which has greatly promoted trade between provinces in China.

At this time, after Emperor Chongzhen verified the treasury income, he summoned the cabinet and six ministries to discuss increasing transportation investment in various places, and no longer limited to local governments using labor to raise enough construction workers during slack farming. Instead, he gave remuneration and daily remuneration to attract people. In addition, the migrant workers who were the first to complete the planned road construction should be rewarded. The reward method for migrant workers is of course money; and local officials are reflected in the assessment.

In this regard, Xue Guoguan and others could understand the emperor's eagerness to repair the traffic that controls the world as soon as possible, but they did not understand why they had to pay so much money to the people.

"My goal is to spend all the money, not to stay in the treasury and rust!" Emperor Chongzhen explained patiently to them, "Only when money is circulated, that is money. If I spend money, the people will be active and the road will be built quickly; if the people have money, they will have the confidence to buy what they want. In this way, it can stimulate the production of more things in various places, and the court can receive more taxes. Only in this way can there be a virtuous cycle, the court will keep making money, and the people will keep getting rich."

Hearing this, many civil servants seemed to understand it, and finally Xue Guoguan asked: "Your Majesty, the world's wealth has a certain amount, so why does the source of money keep coming? If the court has money, the people will have less money!"

The implication is that the money of the court is collected from taxes. If the court has too much money, isn’t the people just less money?

This view was used by Sima Guang to ridicule Wang Anshi as an imitating Sang Hongyang and saying Emperor Wu of Han. Even in the Ming Dynasty, this view was very popular among scholars and officials.

Isn’t the wealth of the Ming Dynasty’s treasury nowadays Zhang Pu and others snatched from the people (actually referring to officials and gentry) and collected from merchants?

After hearing this, Emperor Chongzhen smiled and said, "It seems that I have to publish another book on economics to open up my knowledge!"

"..." Hearing this, the ministers couldn't help but look at each other. Judging from the emperor's long-standing behavior, could it be that there was something wrong with his own ideas?

Seeing their expressions, Emperor Chongzhen smiled and said, "I'll ask you, etc., does the annual increase in silver mine income come from the court or from the people?"

Silver is money, and it is dug out of the ground. The most common place now is Ishimi Yinshan, which was taken from Japan. Xue Guoguan heard that he could not answer the emperor's question, but it did not mean that he was convinced by the emperor's point of view, and immediately replied: "What Your Majesty said is like Ishimi Yinshan. The silver was originally the Tokugawa Shogunate, but now it has returned to the Ming Dynasty, but its total number remains unchanged."

Emperor Chongzhen heard that he changed the topic and no longer talked about the court and the people, but included the original Japanese kingdom. He was not angry, so he asked again: "It's just iron, but if it is made into a steam engine, its value will increase multiple times, how can this money be solved?"

"It comes from the people who buy it, and the people have less money." Xue Guoguan heard it, thought about it and replied.

"..." Emperor Chongzhen was speechless and had to ask again: "The people bought a steam engine. Although they paid money, they also had a steam engine. This steam engine is also valuable. Does he suffer any losses?"

"..." At this moment, it was Xue Guoguan and others' turn to be speechless. How should we distinguish this?

He turned his head to look at the other colleagues, and finally had to say, "Your Majesty, the steam engine is not money."

When Emperor Chongzhen heard this, he immediately asked, "What do you think money is?"

"..." Xue Guoguan was a little stunned when he heard this. Isn't money just money?

"Do you think that money refers to gold and silver, and the silver notes issued by the Royal Bank of the Ming Dynasty? And copper coins, etc., are these money?" Emperor Chongzhen glanced at the bottom and asked again.

Isn't it? This idea is the thought of almost all the ministers below.

For this era, they are all official positions, and they think about how to be an official, and the so-called official is actually managing people. This has not changed in the land of China for many thousand years.

As for whether there are any economic ideas, there must be them, but they are not mainstream and will not be very in-depth.

After Emperor Chongzhen's communication, he felt more and more that it was necessary to popularize economics knowledge. Even if he was a half-baked person, he was definitely much better than those of this era.

This also gave him an idea that the system architectures of all walks of life must be set up by him, a time traveler. He may not be proficient, but proposed a framework for those who are interested to fill this framework, study this framework, and form a complete system. This is very important for the Ming Dynasty.

In other words, in today's Ming Dynasty, the economy needs to develop and the thoughts must be liberated!

Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen taught these ministers economics lessons from the concept of money, and finally told them that wealth was not fixed, but increased with the development of productivity.

In this way, a court meeting that originally discussed the court's major plans and policies became a popular science school. Fortunately, after Emperor Chongzhen pointed out the inherent understanding of these "scholars", as long as he explained it a little, these Ming elites could basically understand the new content that Emperor Chongzhen said, as if he opened their eyes. It turned out that this was the situation!

After understanding these, Emperor Chongzhen told them that the court would increase the issuance of silver notes (in fact, they were almost paper money) to adapt to the current economic development and avoid economic austerity and affect the economy. They would not have much difficulty in understanding these words.

It is barely understandable that this money will be circulated into society through the Ming Dynasty Construction Bank, which will increase employment and further increase social productivity.

After the scattered court, the white-bearded old men all sighed: I learned until I am old, and the ancients did not deceive me! Of course, they must also sigh, why is the emperor younger than them and often goes out to lead troops to fight, but has so much knowledge in his mind?

After this incident, Emperor Chongzhen himself began to write the "The Wealth of the Kingdom" of the Ming Dynasty.

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Chapter completed!