Chapter 143 Tax Reform
Chongzhen also had a clear understanding of Wang An's point that the threat of bandits was greater than external threats, so he asked: "Then according to your opinion, should we focus on suppressing the bandits?"

However, Chongzhen did not expect that his words, which were in line with Wang An's point of view, would be immediately ridiculed by Wang An.

"Haha, silly boy, can the bandits be wiped out?"

Chongzhen frowned in confusion and said, "The so-called bandits are nothing more than a group of refugees. How can they not be wiped out?"

Wang An nodded and agreed, "You're right. Any single group of refugees can be easily wiped out. For example, Gao Yingxiang, who would become a world-famous rebel a few years later, was captured alive by Sun Chuanting and sent to the capital, where he was cut with 1,560 knives before he died!"

"But without Gao Yingxiang, there are Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong. As long as the people don't have enough food to eat, new bandits will appear every day."

"You can strangle hundreds of thousands or millions of people, but can you really kill all the people of the Ming Dynasty?"

Chongzhen thought about it and realized that this was indeed the case. A scene emerged in his mind where all the people in the world had become bandits, holding hoes and carrying poles and rushing into the capital.

He shuddered uncontrollably all over, and Chongzhen grabbed Wang An's arm and asked nervously, "Then what do you think we should do?"

"Suppression is secondary, appeasement is primary!" Wang An spat out six words, "The reason why Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and his ilk were able to gain such widespread support is entirely because the common people had no other way to survive, so they could only follow them in hopes of a glimmer of hope."

"The common people of our Ming Dynasty are the easiest to bully. As long as they have a bowl of rice to eat, they will never rebel!"

"So the most important thing for the Ming Dynasty is not how to wipe out these bandits, but to find a way to give them a bowl of rice to eat. As long as the people have food to eat, no matter how the people in power abuse them, they will not rebel."

"For example, Li Zicheng, whom I mentioned, was a postman. If the Ming Dynasty had not abolished the post stations, causing him to lose his job, he would not have joined the bandits."

Chongzhen's eyes suddenly lit up. It turned out that this great bandit who destroyed the Ming Dynasty according to Wang An was just a postman?
After returning, he ordered people to thoroughly search all the post stations in the country to look for any trace of Li Zicheng.

However, this is just a small matter at the moment. Chongzhen quickly turned his attention back to Wang An, frowned and smiled bitterly, "Nowadays, there are constant natural disasters and man-made disasters in the Ming Dynasty. It is not easy to feed the people..."

"It's hard to say, but it's not hard to say either." Wang An sneered and said, "Do you know how Li Zicheng called on the people to follow him in the rebellion?"

"How did you call for it?" Chongzhen asked.

Wang An's eyes seemed to be as bright as stars, flashing with strange light, and he said word by word: "Eat his mother and drink his mother, the rebel king has come and will not pay taxes!"

"If they don't pay taxes..." Chongzhen muttered silently, "If they really don't pay taxes, how are they going to feed the army?"

However, Wang An suddenly laughed and said, "Not paying taxes is of course impossible. Any regime in history that advocates not paying taxes is a liar!"

"The so-called beating up the local tyrants and dividing up the land is just a small sweet treat given in the early stage to win over the people. Only fools would believe it!" Wang An laughed, "But in this world, people always follow the crowd! Maybe a single person can be very smart, but once there are many people, they will become stupid."

“No matter how outrageous the slogan is, there will always be people who believe it.”

"Before the Ming Dynasty fell, these bandits could still rely on looting to maintain their basic food and clothing, but once the Ming Dynasty fell, these bandits had nothing left to loot and immediately fell apart!"

"But the point of our discussion now is not this, but not paying taxes..."

"It is of course impossible to completely stop paying taxes, but this does not mean that the court cannot reduce the burden on the people, exempt some taxes, reform the court's tax system, and reduce the burden on the people."

As we all know, there were three types of taxes in the late Ming Dynasty: Liao tax, suppression tax, and training tax.

Among them, the Liao salary was collected starting from the 46th year of Wanli, while the other two, the suppression salary and the training salary, were not collected until the 9th year of Chongzhen.

Therefore, the most important impact on the people nowadays is the Liao salary.

As a temporary miscellaneous tax, Liaosheng was initially levied only to deal with the Jiannu in Liaodong, and was originally planned to be collected until the 48th year of Wanli.

Initially, a tax of nine cents of silver was levied on each acre of land. However, in the fourth year of Chongzhen, the border troubles in Liaodong became more serious, and the collection of Liao taxes became a routine practice. The tax was also increased from nine cents per acre to one cent and two cents.

It increased from Wanli's 5.2 million taels to Chongzhen's 6.2 million taels. Just imagine that the entire Ming Dynasty only increased its tax by a few million taels, which doesn't seem like much.

After all, Chongzhen only packaged a Huizhou salt merchant and got more than 20 million taels of silver.

But we must understand one premise, that is, at the end of any dynasty, social wealth is highly controlled by a few people.

As for the majority of the lower-class people, they don’t even have one percent of the wealth.

However, the objects of taxation by the imperial court have never changed and have always been the common people.

Coupled with land annexation, various exorbitant taxes and exploitation by local officials, these two cents of silver became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

And the most important point is that local officials have had a common characteristic from ancient times to the present, that is, they must make some money from every piece of pork they handle, and this was particularly serious in feudal society.

The imperial court clearly only required the collection of one or two cents, but when it came to the grassroots government offices, local officials and clerks would use all kinds of tricks to levy heavy taxes.

Things like refracted fire consumption, tip-kicking taxes, etc. Originally, the people only had to pay one or two cents, but after all these operations, the taxes the people need to pay will double!
The average annual income of farmers in the Ming Dynasty was eight taels of silver.

In good years, eight taels of silver could buy eight shi of grain, each shi being equivalent to 160 kilograms today.

However, a peasant family usually has four or five people, and their food, clothing, housing, transportation, eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, birth, aging, sickness and death all depend on these eight taels of silver.

Even if the government did not exploit them, the people still lived a very difficult life, and could only barely survive by not starving to death.

One can imagine how miserable the people's lives will be if the government continues to exploit them.

Just ask yourself, if you see your family members starving to death one by one, who would not rebel if given the chance?

Therefore, if we want to maintain domestic stability, we must start from three aspects.

The first was to abolish excessive taxes and levies, announce to the world that no additional Liao tribute would be levied, and Zhang Juzheng's "One Whip" system would be re-implemented.

On the basis of Zhang Juzheng's border policy, he implemented the policy of allocating land tax to each farmland, simplified the tax system, reduced the tax collection links, and at the same time distributed the poll tax evenly among the fields.

(End of this chapter)