I Build an Aircraft Carrier in the Ming Dynasty

October 14th.

Dahua's first large-scale decree after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Reclamation Order was promulgated.

Now that the harvest of autumn rice has basically been completed, the spring planting from now to next year will be the longest period of vacation for the people.

Reclamation of wasteland basically can only rely on this period of time, and there are no conditions for reclamation of land during other busy farming seasons.

At present, the area of ​​cultivated land in China is much smaller than in later generations, and there is still a large amount of land that can be cultivated.

However, it is very difficult to reclaim these wastelands, and it is definitely not enough to rely on the strength of the people.

After all, most of the fields that have not been cultivated are because there is no water source.

Irrigation is the biggest problem in farming.

If you want to reclaim fertile fields, you must first build water conservancy and dig ditches to allow water to flow into those fields.

It is absolutely impossible to plant rice without water. It is not cost-effective to rely on people to carry water for irrigation, and if people are exhausted, they will not be able to harvest much food.

Therefore, in ancient times, there was a large area of ​​wasteland, but the people who had no land rarely reclaimed it, because the cost of reclamation was very high.

Now Wu Changqing promulgated the reclamation order, which promised that the government would be responsible for the tools and expenses for the construction of the ditches, and the people

It just takes a little effort.

At the same time, farm tools for land reclamation are also distributed free of charge by the government.

Without iron farm tools, cultivating the land can be exhausting.

After all, those wastelands are harder and more weedy than regularly cultivated fields.

The decree stipulates that the ownership of the reclaimed land belongs to the imperial court, but the right to use it belongs to the reclaimer permanently.

What does that mean?

That is to say, unless the court wants to build roads, build urban areas, and mine ore, those lands cannot be recovered. Those lands were used permanently by the cultivators and were not taxed.

However, when the imperial court needs to take up farmland to build roads, the people must hand it over unconditionally, and the government will give a sum of money as compensation.

Wu Changqing is guarding against the drawbacks of private ownership of land. If he admits private ownership of land, and plans to build an airport or build a railway somewhere in the future, those unscrupulous people will dare to ask for tens of thousands of taels per mu of land, otherwise they will not sell it.

Or, under the instigation of someone with a heart, he deliberately went against the government.

At that time, the imperial court will either slap itself in the face and break the laws it has made. Or they will be disgusted by these unscrupulous people, and the railway will be built in another place, which will increase the huge construction cost.

There is no such thing in this era.

But Wu Changqing, as a later generation, has seen a lot, so he has to be on guard first.

After all, there are many bad people who are officials, and there are many people with low consciousness. People are all selfish.

Even if the land is not privately owned, the reclamation decree issued by Wu Changqing is an incomparable favor for the common people.

Permanent use rights without paying taxes. Before this change, the people didn't even dare to think about it.

In the past, although the land reclaimed by the common people belonged to them, they had to pay high taxes. The little grain obtained after tax is insignificant compared to the cost of reclamation.

Therefore, those people who had no land in the past were willing to work as tenant farmers in the landlord's manor, rather than reclaiming their own land.

When Wu Changqing discussed it with several cabinet ministers, several ministers disagreed, and felt that this was too favorable for the common people. Taxes can be appropriately exempted for a few years, but there is no need to be permanently free.

In response, Wu Changqing patiently explained the art of tax collection to them.

The most stupid way to collect taxes is to ask people for food directly.

The people themselves are fortunate to have to turn over the food they have grown so hard, and they are naturally unhappy in their hearts.

A slightly smarter way of collecting taxes is to raise the prices of some necessities of life.

Increase the price of salt, increase the price of rice milling, increase the price of red brick and cement used to build houses, and then collect the merchant's tax.

In this way, the merchants will earn some profits, and the taxation of the imperial court will not be low.

Although people no longer have to pay grain, they are paying invisible taxes and fees when they buy necessities of life.

In this model, only very smart people can understand that this is the ghost of the imperial court. Ordinary people will only yell at those businessmen who are profiteers and transfer their anger from the imperial court to the merchants.

This is of great benefit to domination.

Of course, there are smarter ways to collect taxes.

For example, printing money.

After the introduction of paper money, the court can print more banknotes appropriately according to the wealth of the society, so that there is no tax, and the court has money to use.

As for the common people, it seems that they have never paid taxes, but as there are more and more currencies on the market, the currency is forced to depreciate, which is essentially equivalent to paying taxes.

This way of taxation, the people are even more difficult to detect.

Of course, this method needs to be fine-tuned. If too much money is issued, causing too much inflation, the credit of the paper money will collapse.

The latter two tax collection methods are logically feasible, but are prone to cause some problems in practice.

For example, when the price of salt rises, some people will control themselves to eat less salt, which will have an impact on their health.

For example, by printing and distributing money, some people will not lose money if they buy things early, while those who keep saving money will suffer a lot, resulting in inequality.

Therefore, those methods only make sense logically. In the specific implementation, further refinement and improvement are required.

And this refinement and improvement work is a tedious and huge project, Wu

Naturally, Changqing will leave it to the ministers below to solve it, otherwise what is the use of these ministers.

As an emperor, Wu Changqing can point them in the right direction, which is really rare.

You must know that most emperors of various dynasties and generations are actually just a stamp, and basically they cannot make any constructive decisions. After the ministers researched the policy, the emperor stamped a seal with the jade seal.

As long as the emperor does not blindly stamp a few seals, he is considered a qualified emperor in the eyes of ministers.

Emperors who can make some major decisions and put forward constructive opinions are all excellent emperors.

Such as Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Di, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and the like.

An emperor like Wu Changqing who can directly point his ministers in the right direction is unique in history.

Because, no emperor has as much insight as Wu Changqing.

People in the 21st century receive more information in a day than the ancients received in a year.

In terms of knowledge, Wu Changqing is more powerful than the entire cabinet combined.

This is also where those ministers admire and revere Wu Changqing.

Even though Wu Changqing was only seventeen years old, none of the ministers below felt that he was smarter or more knowledgeable than Wu Changqing.

If an emperor like Wu Changqing was not in the right position, if he was not capable of crushing everyone, how could others surrender willingly.

It's such a cool thing to be an emperor, which man doesn't want to. The reason why they do not rebel is just because they know that they have no ability.

Compared with Wu Changqing's identity, the ministers were more in awe of the unfathomable knowledge of Wu Changqing.