New Shun 1730

It sounds like all the good news coming from Europe is good.

Moreover, Liu Yu won the bet, and the British did not choose to bet on the fate of the country. They attacked Dashun Bandu despite the fact that they had just finished the Austrian Succession War and public opinion.

But in fact, in Liu Yu's view, this is both a good opportunity and a huge challenge for China...not Dashun.

Let go of any preconceived positions.

Exclude any progressive or reactionary criticism.

From a purely economic and financial perspective, it is easy to understand the huge crises and challenges Dashun is currently facing.

Dashun does not have large-scale gold or silver mines in its own country, but it uses silver and copper coins as legal tender.

This means that the country does not have the right to issue silver currency, but only the right to issue copper coins.

Last year, the number of coins minted by Dashun Mint Bureau for the whole year was 1048,759,660 Wen, which is equivalent to 1.04 million taels of silver.

In other words, last year Dashun’s “central bank” issued 1.04 million taels of banknotes.

Last year, including the funds returned by Western Trading Companies this year, Dashun's total trade surplus, including the total volume of Japan, Nanyang, India, and the European and American trade zones, was 42 million taels.

In other words, the amount of banknotes issued by the country's central bank is one-fortieth of the influx of foreign currency.

Every year, 40 times the amount of hot money "printed" by the central bank pours in, and it can be used directly without the need for local currency exchange, and it is even a tax-approved currency.

The total fiscal revenue of the country's central government, that is, white revenue on the surface, is only 30 million taels of silver.

The country tacitly allows local governments to use apportionment and other methods, also known as gray revenue, to pay for local expenses. It is about three to five times the central fiscal revenue, about 120 to 30 million taels.

For such a big country, even a fool knows that a national tax of 30 million taels is not enough. At most, border expenditures, one-time troops, and official salaries can be maintained.

If there is a slight natural disaster, the national treasury will be exhausted.

Knowing clearly that taxes are not enough, yet not raising taxes, and acquiescing to local governments to use labor, apportionment, etc. to pay for local expenditures. A gentleman behaves like a chef and pretends to be blind and does not know what the local area is like.

White income is far lower than gray income, which will inevitably lead to a surge in the cost of governance.

The reason why it hasn't collapsed yet is because under the gray income, there is also black income from bribery and corruption like the late Ming Dynasty, but now the black income has not exceeded the gray income.

Anyone with common sense in economics will understand what this means when they see this set of data.

Today, the total annual fiscal revenue of the imperial household government, excluding the salt tax, is less than half of the import and export trade surplus.

The country's trade surplus, the total amount of "foreign currency" imported every year, is higher than the total fiscal revenue of the central government.

The total amount of "foreign currency" imported every year is 40 times that of the country's banknotes; the total amount of "foreign currency" imported every year is about 1.5 yuan of total fiscal revenue.

In this case, there is absolutely no government interference in the country.

Land can be bought and sold completely freely.

The maximum loan interest rate stipulated by law is 36% per annum.

The average land rent is 50% to 60% of the land's annual harvest.

The gentry class can "avoid taxes" "legally and reasonably". This does not mean that they do not pay national taxes, but that the Ming and Shun systems are obviously small governments. The national taxes from the central government are not much, and local expenditures are insufficient and can be increased by themselves - -The reform of Tianyou Palace from the abolition of the prime minister in Ming Dynasty to Dashun only strengthened the imperial power and the monarchy, but did not strengthen the centralization of power.

Autocratic monarchy and centralization of power are not the same thing.

There is a striking contrast with the outrageous window tax in the UK. The window tax is set to be collected in the summer, and the tax can be paid in full in the fall.

In the Ming Dynasty or Dashun, let alone the outrageous high-end operation of collecting all the new taxes in three months, let’s just say that the gentry owes the national tax and tax banks in various places. Can the arrears be recovered in three years?

If you can’t even collect taxes, do you still deserve to be called centralization?

Another comparison, during the Meiji Restoration next door, there was a hanging industry?

Agricultural taxes still accounted for the absolute majority of the fiscal revenue, 50.72 million yen, accounting for 88% of the total fiscal revenue. At that time, the yen was benchmarked against gold. 1 yen was 1.5 grams of gold. The gold-silver ratio was 1:16, which was approximately equivalent to 8,000 Ten thousand taels of silver.

The cultivated land is six to seven times that of Japan, but the agricultural tax revenue of the national finance is one-quarter of that of Japan after the Meiji land reform.

If there had been no overthrowing war, no Southwest War, no return of titles, and the core land issue had not been touched, the reform would have been at the level of a natural protection reform, and it might not have been as good as the criticized Westernization Movement.

Liu Yu's deep hatred for the gentry and landlords in Dashun was not because of "exploitation."

He is now the spokesperson of the emerging bourgeoisie in Dashun. How can Bourgeois talk about exploitation?

Only talk about "interests", "yield of profit" and "direction of capital flow".

In Zi Yan Zi.

He was completely from the perspective of the bourgeoisie, and he hated the landlords and gentry deeply.

I hate it to the core of my being and wish it could not be completely eradicated.

Dashun's two most profitable investments are land purchase and financial loan sharking.

As the spokesperson of the bourgeoisie, he wanted to engage in industry, commerce, capital flow, and capital investment. As a result, the gentry and landlords in Dashun made it difficult for him.

Industry, industry, everyone knows that the future of the country lies in the development of industry, but the damn capital is all going to land and loan sharks, how can it develop?

What is the annual rate of return of Quarrybank Water Powered Spinning Mill, a living fossil of the British Industrial Revolution?

13%!

The UK exclaimed that it was “three times the national debt income”, “unprecedented high-yield investment”, and “the morning star leading the capital flow to the textile industry”.

Dashun doesn't say anything about the sidelines of "Nine Outs and Thirteen Returns", and lends money completely according to the "Da Shun Law". What is the annual rate of return? British government bonds are basically equal to the maximum interest rate specified.

For the textile industry to achieve the gold-absorbing effect of the UK, which is what the British exclaimed as “three times the national debt income”, the annual rate of return must reach 108%.

Why can the annual rate of return of real industry reach such a high level? Open an alchemy room to refine gold?

The bizarre policy of one tax per thirty, the cerebral congestion policy of exempting gentry from chores and exempting local governments from apportionment, what is the annual income from land?

A few years ago, under extreme conditions in Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture, the land price was 2.4 taels of silver per mu, the land rent was 6 taels of silver per year, and the yield was 40%.

At one time, there was a trend of "owners are not as good as tenants". Farmers took the initiative to sell their land and become tenants to avoid chores and local apportionment.

Let’s not talk about Shanghai County back then under extreme conditions, but only talk about Northern Jiangsu under the Great Shun’s Nanyang policy in recent years.

In addition to land rent, there are other benefits.

Is it profitable to lend money nearby?

Sleeping with the daughter-in-law and daughter of a tenant farmer is free. Is it considered a benefit? You have to spend money to go to Yao Street.

Is it a benefit to let tenant farmers do hard work during the off-farm period to build ridges, dams, houses, and walls?

Avoid the owner’s first and last name. If you have to give the owner's father, or even if you beat the dog to death, you have to watch the dog's funeral. Is the extra money considered a gain?

They were so hungry that they wanted to eat from a wealthy family, and more than thirty people were directly buried alive, and they were labeled as "conspirators." If the emperor didn't know about it, there would be no punishment. Is it a gain?

Is this called centralization? This is clearly a modified version of the free land buying and selling policy of medieval feudal serfdom.

The key is that knights still have to fulfill their feudal obligations and go to war. Landowners and gentry only need to pay a national tax of thirty to one. Which feudal knight has such a low feudal obligation plus feudal tribute?

If we don't care about anything, how can the rate of return of any industry reach 40%?

A single bourgeoisie can transform into a landowner or a loan shark.

As the spokesperson of the Dashun bourgeoisie, Liu Yu represented the interests of the entire emerging class, so he naturally hated the gentry and landlords deeply, to the core of his being.

As long as there is a slight change in land issues and tax policies, many of the things he has done in the past twenty years will be to take off his pants and fart.

But now?

We are busy with foreign trade here, but when we turn around, we have to worry about huge amounts of silver flowing into the land. We have to issue paper currency exchange coupons to try to prevent hot money from flowing to the land.

Fighting wits with the British consumes one-fifth of the energy, and the remaining four-fifths of the energy is spent fighting with the land.

If he doesn't do this, he will have no choice but to imitate the Manchu chieftains in history who acted like mistresses:

Gan Xiaosi took the lead in embezzlement, bribery, extortion, open robbery, and white-glove agents. He used various means to collect the silver flowing in from foreign trade into his hands, and then spent it on war, disaster relief, garden construction, etc.

But that is of no use, does not touch on the fundamentals, and is just tinkering to maintain the small-scale peasant economy. If you change to someone who is not so talented as a "political animal", his prototype will be revealed immediately.

Besides, counting on the emperor is like opening a blind box in future generations.

The chances of Liu Che, Li Er, and Zhu Yuanzhang at the SSR level are too low.

Even for the Chinese Empire, in the face of this great change that has not happened in a thousand years, the top priority is not to draw cards like Liu Che and Li Er, but to never draw cards like Zhu Qizhen and Zhao Gou.

You can't count on the emperor, and Liu Yu has no ability to rebel in the prosperous times and carry out quick and messy violent land reforms. Naturally, he will feel uncomfortable all over.

When I look at the gentry every day, I think about the rate of return on land and the rate of return on industry and commerce. In my eyes, the gentry and landlords are all economic symbols of land rent.

Liu Yu has used almost all the means at his disposal.

Including and not limited to:

The Boy's Army, a spy organization directly under the emperor, was used to monitor the flow of silver from these maritime business groups.

We should introduce silver exchange coupons that look like farting after taking off your pants, and try to control the silver that exceeds the total fiscal revenue of the imperial court every year, so that it does not flow to places where it should not go.

They are completely reactionary and stand on the side of "forever banning people from traveling together and calling for rest". They lower labor costs in exchange for industrial and commercial profits that are slightly higher than land rent returns, begging for capital to set up handicraft workshops.

The feudal aristocratic status and connections were used to scare the monkeys and deal with the "innocent" Dahai merchant who used a large amount of overseas silver to buy land. There is no law in Dashun that stipulates that land cannot be bought or sold.

In spite of the reputation of the gentry and the gentry as a jab in the spine, the tithe tax reform was carried out in southern Jiangsu to reduce the burden on farmers, increase land prices, and reduce land rent income.

The gentleman turned a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of people in the Dayuling area who had lost their jobs due to the relocation of the commercial center. The gentleman knew that the emperor might choose to use force to suppress it, but he did not take the initiative to say "who develops and who protects", leaving many industrial and commercial groups in Songjiang Prefecture. Pay this tax as a fiscal transfer payment.

Acquiescing to the development of human trafficking in Southeast Asia. They knew clearly that they were debt slaves and indentured slaves, but they did not admit that they were slaves. Instead, they said they were indentured laborers, in order to reduce the development costs of Nanyang, increase the rate of return on capital, and prevent capital from flowing to domestic land but to Nanyang.

They colluded with Westerners, borrowed silver from Western financial capital groups, and paid 7% interest every year, but they resolutely refused to support "national capital" and did not ask them to borrow loans with 20% annual interest.

Every year, he paid more than 200,000 taels of silver, and carried out seedling loans in southern Jiangsu, striving to reduce the lending income in southern Jiangsu, so that some people would start to invest in about 12% of the industries and businesses that were originally ignored.

He violated the principle of "cheap rice hurts farmers" and imported rice from Southeast Asia to reduce the cost of industry and commerce, reduce the landlords' physical rental income, and indirectly increase the relative return on investment in industry and commerce.

He was obviously a regulator on the government side, but he had to coax these emerging classes like grandsons and children to achieve the company policy of "high accumulation and low dividends".

He had used all his tricks to make the company policy of "high accumulation and low dividends" set at this dividend meeting.

He carried out the opium case and the religious case, and closed the British and Portuguese trading houses.

He sealed and increased taxes on the Danish trading house.

He carried out hunger marketing to cut off the spice trade for one or two years.

Coupled with the special situation in Southeast Asia and India.

The result of using all possible means is to make the trade start with a good start, and to raise the profit margin to an extremely high level.

Then the extremely high is turned into a relatively high level, which is called "high accumulation and low dividends". In fact, this "low" is also relative.

The situation that was finally opened up seems infinitely beautiful and promising in the future, but in fact it is extremely fragile.

This good situation is extremely abnormal, and it has emptied all the means that Liu Yu can use.

The court has no money, and the six governments cannot use money to fill the bottomless pit of the navy. They can only rely on the high accumulation policy of trade to build a navy that is enough to seize the sea power.

Europe is shrouded in war clouds, and the next war may start within ten years. Can the extremely high accumulation rate of this year be maintained within ten years? Can a family foundation that can seize the sea power be accumulated?

These problems seem to be about the navy, but in fact they are still closely related to the land and tax policies of Dashun.

This year's annual dividend interest rate was finally determined to be 17%.

This is the low of "high accumulation and low dividends" mentioned by Liu Yu. In fact, it is already quite high.

If the land and tax policies change, so that the profit rate of capital investment in land and lending is not so high, in fact, the annual dividend rate can continue to decline.

If it can be like the UK, the average investment rate of return is only about 5%.

Then, as long as the return rate of Western trade can reach 10%, investors will flock to it.

And if the annual dividend rate is reduced to 10%, at least a few more battleships can be built every year.

But now, if it is reduced to 10%, there is only one result for the Western Trade Company: that is, it will be a Dutch-funded enterprise.

There will be no gentry or merchants investing in Dashun, the return rate is too low.

Liu Yu has a piece of intelligence related to the UK and "land returns", which shows how much trouble he is facing now.

In the UK, buying a 100-acre plantation in Jamaica or Barbados, where sugar cane is produced, costs about 5,700 pounds.

And what is its return rate? The average income of this 100 acres is 500 pounds - sugarcane is risky, and small farmers cannot afford price fluctuations, so it can only be calculated as an average.

In other words, the annual rate of return is 9% to 10%.

Plantations in places like Jamaica and Barbados are top-notch commodities, and are Caribbean tropical islands that "would not be exchanged for the whole of Canada".

In other words, the annual average rate of return of 9% can make the British fight for it.

In Dashun, the annual average rate of return of 9%, forget it, it is estimated that it will have to rely on the government's compulsory apportionment to be forced to operate, and in return, it will be full of dissatisfaction.

Why can Dashun develop Nanyang?

Because the price of a smuggled black slave is 150 taels, and 30 taels are added for tax reporting; a European indentured slave has an average of about 36 taels per year; and a disaster victim in Lianghuai goes to a plantation in Nanyang for about 10 taels per year.

A qualified European sailor has an annual salary of 120 taels; and the best Chinese sailors have an annual salary of 36 taels.

A qualified European merchant ship mate who can sail to Asia has an annual salary of 300 taels, plus a certain amount of private goods sales. Of course, it is cheaper to sail to the Caribbean, 180 taels.

And the excellent Dashun merchant ship mate who knows mathematics, geometry, cartography, almost knows a little French or Latin, can seamlessly learn to use the moon phase chart to calculate longitude in the future, and is basically at the level of warship mate, has an annual salary of 120 taels.

A 350-ton frigate with guns is 8,500 pounds, 30,000 taels of silver; in Dashun, the same specifications of frigates and guns have been reduced to 12,000 taels of silver by steam engine sawing and boring technology.

It was suppressed to this extent, relying on the "Nanyang immigrants" who were almost contract slavery, and relying on the imperial court's orders for rice, and the full profit from trade with Europe, which barely maintained the "investment" in Nanyang.

And what is the root cause? After all, it is still the land issue of landlords and gentry.

The yield and rent of land are too high.

The Dashun Dynasty did not need land reform. Even if it could reduce the rent by 375%, all these troubles would be gone, and capital would spontaneously flow to Southeast Asia, Ezo, Whale Sea, industry and commerce, and overseas trade.

The most painful thing in the world is not not knowing where the way out is.

It is knowing the way out and where the problem is, but being unable to do anything about it.