Tang Dynasty: Nine-year-old County Grandpa

On the side of the hill on the edge of the Yellow River, Chu Jie and Li Shimin stood head-on.

In front of Li Shimin's tall figure, Chu Jie's figure looked very thin.

But the guards who stayed away from them were surprised to find that Chu Jie's demeanor was neither humble nor arrogant, and his aura was not much worse than Li Shimin, who had put down his identity as emperor opposite.

"Tell me, my Datang, why are you so poor. "

Money, why isn't it worth much?" asked

Li Shimin with a look of majesty.

"Your Majesty, suppose you are now a wealthy merchant, and your money can hire someone to build you a house, you can farm food for you, and you can buy a young and beautiful woman.

"But after all, after a certain amount of food, it is not just needed, women, in the end, there are only three or five in a lifetime.

"When they are old and decrepit, they no longer need women, they no longer need so many things to eat, drink and have fun, and the money in their hands will not be used up after all."

"So the copper coins were hoarded in the cellar from generation to generation.

"Then one by one, like hungry wolves, they will try to grasp the land in their hands whenever they have the opportunity.

"Your Majesty's dynasty, no different from other dynasties, relied on land taxes to feed the army, and after gaining more land to cultivate through expansion, it slowly declined with land annexation.

"We are too dependent on land, and we have nothing to get except land, and our business tax is not perfect, and we actually collect taxes according to the façade.

"The tax of half a penny for a façade, with all due respect, is not enough money to hire a cleaner to sweep the street at the door.

Chu Jie shrugged his shoulders and said.

"Isn't it enough to hire a sweeper for half a pen? boy, you're talking nonsense.

Li Shimin frowned and said.

He also deeply sympathized with Chu Jie's previous words.

But the latter sentence did break his eggs a little.

"Your Majesty, if it is enough, in the final analysis, it is because our labor is not valuable, but the labor is not valuable, and we can't make many majestic buildings out, in the final analysis, it is because the production project is single, and it is mainly farming, so the labor is not valuable.

"So the minister suggested that in order to solve the problem of too much dependence on land, business should be developed and a commercial tax should be collected.

"As long as commerce is up, technology advances, and materials circulate in a timely manner, so that the money hidden in the cellars by the landlords can flow back into the market, and with money, we can give the best treatment to those who farm the land and increase the enthusiasm for production."

"When there are natural and man-made disasters, we also have enough financial resources to purchase food from inside and outside to provide timely relief.

"Otherwise, if there is a natural or man-made disaster like this locust plague, even if the imperial court goes all out to rescue, in the end, many people will starve to death, and the country will be greatly affected.

"What's more, it is natural for the family to annex land, and our country has also put development on land, and the land planting industry is saturated, and we need open source." "

Commerce, it has to be done, commercial taxes, it has to be put away, otherwise we are no different from those other dynasties.

"Your Majesty is ambitious, and may be able to resolve the internal land conflict by annexing more land, but there are not many places that are really suitable for farming from Goguryeo, Samhan, and even the Wa Kingdom to the east and Tubo in the west.

"Of course, there is more land waiting for us further out of the ocean, but the internal productivity cannot be raised, and we simply cannot send enough troops to expedition that far.

"So, Your Majesty, if you want the country to be rich and the people strong, and if you want not to follow the old path of any previous dynasties, you must pull out the roots of the country from the land. "

We must pull enough people out of the land as well!" Chu

Jie said in a deep voice.

"Further aath in the ocean? you mean Tianzhu? That's a good place.

"But it's true that as you said, it's impossible for us Datang to reach that far.

"To a certain extent, we may not even be able to clean up Tibet, after all, we can't fight it."

Li Shimin was as surprised by Chu Jie, he didn't get angry, but just smiled bitterly.

"Your Majesty was not angry at Wechen's deviant statement, but made Wechen grateful.

Chu Jie sighed and said.

"Why should I be angry? Your words provoked those families, once our Tang Dynasty pulled out

the land, they took the land to self-respect, and disappeared, I am not a family, what are you angry about?" "But people are all in business, and they all go to manage profits, who will farm the land?"

Li Shimin asked a common sense question in this era.

"Your Majesty, at present, we have an average of three people in Datang, with an average of 20 acres of land.

"But with the current technology, even if you don't make any innovations, can a family with two husbands and wives really only be able to cultivate twenty acres of land?"

Chu Jie asked rhetorically.

"Uh...... Well, I'm not good at farming,......"

Li Shimin scratched his head and said.

He is really not good at farming, he is a military general from a noble background, and he was plagued by locusts before, eating locusts in front of everyone, which was just a political show.

He really doesn't have any opinions about farming.

"Your Majesty, even in the Qin Dynasty, a family could cultivate hundreds of acres of land, but there would be no good seeds and not much irrigation technology.

"Now, if we do a good job of infrastructure, a single household can manage more than 600 acres of land, and with cattle, we can manage thousands of acres of land." "

Isn't it strange to you, Your Majesty, that the land annexed by those squires is thousands of acres at every turn, but there are never more than thirty servants?"

"In the final analysis, a county town with 100,000 acres of land, with less than five hundred people in the case of perfect infrastructure, can almost complete all the work.

"These families, of course, treat their own land with a lot of construction, so they invest little manpower.

"We have a lot of land in the hands of scattered homesteaders, and how can they organize people to pool money for water conservancy? "

Your Majesty, we don't need so many people to farm at all, we just need a professional team to do it.

"In the final analysis, more than 300,000 professional farmers can do the existing land, but we have more than 2 million households, nearly 30 million people, in their midst.

"Those families have advantages in land and water conservancy, they concentrate resources, and they can speak in the court, and the annexation of land by them is completely in line with the laws of economy, but we base the fortune of the country on the fact that they do not annex it, which turns the country into a weaker."

Chu Jie's words made Li Shimin's eyes widen suddenly, and his expression changed greatly.