Another thing is to increase the salaries of officials.

The salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty were very low. The annual income of a first-rank official was only one thousand shi and a salary of 300 guan; the annual income of a seventh-rank county magistrate was 200 shi and a salary of 60 guan.

 In comparison, during the Tang Dynasty, the annual salary of a first-grade official was 8,000 guan and the job land was 60 hectares. In addition, there is an annual salary of two thousand guan.

Ming Dynasty officials could not even compare with others.

What’s even more unfortunate is that because the tax strategy formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was a tax in kind, the court often collected a lot of in kind but had no money.

 Therefore, when paying salaries to officials, these physical objects can only be converted into money and given to the officials. For example, silk and cotton are used in spring and summer, and hematoxylin and pepper are used in autumn and winter.

 The prices of these physical objects are actually low compared to the market value. As a result, officials' salaries will be even lower.

 As a result, officials in the early Ming Dynasty were miserable. The famous upright official Chen Guan, who was an official himself, could not even feed his wife and children. After his death, his wife and children almost starved to death.

  Liu Song, the Minister of Civil Affairs, was in a high position and held the real power of official promotion and assessment. However, after more than ten years as an official, his hometown did not add any property. He only had a shabby quilt as a cover for more than ten years. It was later bitten by a mouse before it was replaced. Although the quilt was changed, the fabric was still repaired and replenished by him in the spirit of not wasting it and turned into a set of clothes for his son.

 So during the Hongwu period, there was a unique phenomenon. When an official takes office, his relatives and friends are not only not happy for him, but also cry as if in mourning.

Therefore, even if Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, used his greatest strength to fight against corruption, he would be stripped of daylilies if he embezzled sixty taels. It can be said that no one in the history of anti-corruption has been as strict as him.

 But the more he fights against corruption, the more corrupt officials become, and the more civil unrest he triggers.

According to incomplete statistics, from the first year of Hongwu to the eighteenth year of Hongwu, more than a hundred peasant uprisings broke out in the newly founded Ming Dynasty, with a frequency of more than six per year.

 Such a high frequency is rare in the world. Even during the reign of Song Huizong, the most famous faint emperor in history, there were not so many. This shows how miserable the people's lives were.

 So Xiang Nan will now increase the salaries of officials. However, due to the ancestral system, it was difficult to increase the salary, so an allowance was added.

 The amount of the allowance is ten times or even a hundred times the regular salary. As a result, the official's income will naturally increase significantly, so no one will be unhappy.

 Even the cabinet bachelors agreed with Xiang Nan's idea. After all, they represent the interests of civil servants. If they oppose salary increases, they may be drowned in the spit of officials.

It’s just that although a salary increase is a good thing, the court really has no money. Even the millions of taels of silver from the Ministry of Accounts are not enough to pay the officials.

So Xiang Nan took advantage of the situation and proposed the "One Whip Law" to reform the tax system.

 …

The whip method was originally proposed by Gui E, a cabinet scholar during the Jiajing period. During the Wanli period, Zhang Juzheng, a cabinet scholar, popularized it.

 The so-called "One Whip Law" refers to the consolidation of land taxes, corvées and other miscellaneous levies in various states and counties into one, and the collection of silver tael is combined and paid per mu.

 Specific measures include: first, clearing land and expanding the collection area to make taxes relatively even.

 In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, land annexation was already very serious. The rich have endless stretches of land, but the poor have no place to stand. However, the wealthy concealed the number of their fields and did not bear the corresponding taxes. This phenomenon was very common at the time.

 So for the sake of fairness, the land must be remeasured. Only in this way can taxes be relatively even.      Second, unify taxes and levies, limit excessive harassment, and stabilize taxes.

 Before the implementation of the One Whip Law, taxes and servitude were separated. The taxes were paid in the form of acres of land, and the taxes were collected in the form of household servants. In addition to the taxes and taxes, there were many additional things such as square objects and tribute.

 After implementing one whip method, everything is simplified into one. The taxes were returned to the land and collected according to the acres; the labor service was changed to hired service, and the court hired people to serve on its behalf.

 Due to the unified taxation and servitude, it is difficult for officials at all levels to use their names cleverly. Therefore, many disadvantages have been eliminated, taxes have stabilized, and farmers can have some peace of mind.

 Three, collect money per mu and collect money from officials to make the collection method more complete.

 In the past, land taxes were paid in kind, such as grain, cloth, spices, and even handicrafts, which could be used to pay taxes. Now it is changed directly to payment. In this way, the cost of transportation and storage was saved, which greatly increased the court's fiscal revenue.

Moreover, in the past, land tax was mostly handled by the ley chief and the grain chief. They had a hand in it, and it was inevitable that they would line their own pockets and steal. The official ending official solution can effectively avoid this.

 …

However, the whipping method of the Ming Dynasty was not all good and had no disadvantages.

 One of the disadvantages is that it does not take into account the differences between regions. There are more people in the south of the Yangtze River but less land, while in the north there are fewer people and more land. A one-size-fits-all tax policy will bring disaster to the people in the north.

 The second disadvantage is that a whip cannot completely prevent additional factions. In the late Ming Dynasty, in addition to the whip law, officials still sent additional corvees and taxes, which caused the people to pay more taxes and became miserable.

The third disadvantage is that the one-whip law abolishes physical tax and replaces it with tax money, which is naturally a good thing for the court. But when people want to pay taxes, they need to sell grain and rice to merchants in exchange for money, and then give the money to the government.

 As a result, merchants will take the opportunity to purchase at lower prices, resulting in low prices and harm to farmers. Therefore, the burden on the people has become heavier.

The fourth disadvantage is that the government will smelt the collected silver into official ingots and hand them over to the national treasury. When the silver is smelted, it will inevitably suffer losses, which is called "fire loss".

In order to make up for this shortfall, the government often levies a few percent more taxes from the people, which is called "waste", which also increases the burden on the people.

 Therefore, although the Yiyi whip method was widely promoted by Zhang Juzheng during the Wanli period, it was practiced for a period of time. However, after Zhang Juzheng's death, the whipping method was gradually abandoned.

 The lives of the people have become even more miserable than before.

 …

 Fortunately, Xiang Nan had learned a whip method and knew its pros and cons, so he made certain modifications compared to the original version of the Ming Dynasty.

  First, in view of the local differences between the north, south, and east, the specific details of the whip law were modified; second, the investigation and punishment of corrupt officials was intensified;

 Three, during the grain purchase period, the government will set the lowest purchase price based on the grain prices in recent months, and when necessary, the government will purchase grain to replenish the national treasury;

 Fourth, consumption and envy were returned to the public, and the imperial court unified the proportion of consumption and collected taxes to prevent officials from apportioning privately.

 After the One Whip Method was launched, it faced great resistance. Because it touched the interests of officials and gentry, the first article of land inventory made those corrupt officials, local tyrants and gentry who occupied a large amount of farmland but failed to pay for it resisted.