Li Yuanping said, "Use salt instead of soldiers, disrupting salt law and damaging the court."

In the summer months, in the west room of Zichen Hall of Daming Palace, in the roar of the white thunder and lightning, thousands of rain poured down in straight lines. The rainwater gathered and went down the raised eaves. The dragon head extending from the white jade railings slightly raised, and the water continued to discharge from its mouth and poured into the churning dragon head canal.

Gao Yue stood on the side of the base column of the ear chamber with an uneasy expression, feeling the roar of the wind and rain outside.

Just before it rained and the sun was still bright, several servants from Yiyang found him in front of the palace gate and told himself that Yiyang (actually Lingxu) had just given birth to a boy named "Wang Chengyue".

Lingxu is always a person who does what he says.

Gao Yue could only accept the fact that his son's surname was Wang.

In the center of the ear chamber, the emperor was furious, and there were some goods on the long desk in front of him.

These were all the salt and iron and Jianghuai Transportation Authority Zhang Pang, who was from the Yangtze River and Huaihe River Transportation Authority, just sent to the capital under the name of "salt profit".

The most important task of the Salt and Iron Department among the three departments is to transfer the salt and profit from the southeast to the court.

During the Dali period of Emperor Daizong, salt profit was half of the world's taxes, and the court relied heavily on it.

But this year, the emperor completely got angry when he saw the so-called "salt profit".

He angrily picked up a tortoiseshell, "This is the so-called light goods sold by Zhang Pang. The price is actually marked on the book, and each one costs four cents of coins!"

Then the emperor picked up a small lacquerware, which seemed to be a bowl, and roared at Gao Yue, Lu Zhi, Jia Dan and Dong Jin present, "This lacquerware is considered a permanent amount."

What made the emperor go most was that there were thick rolls of earthen silk piled on the long table, and such a piece of goods was actually worth two hundred coins per piece. The emperor burst out with divine power, and in extreme anger, he tore the earthen silk cloth to pieces.

The crisp sound suddenly echoed in the hall.

Everyone knows that the emperor is really true and is very angry.

Dong Jin didn't dare to speak out, but Lu Zhi stepped forward and said, "This is Zhang Pang's use of his fictitious numbers to deceive the emperor."

Hearing this, the emperor nodded helplessly, then sat on the rope bed, and said to you weakly that the actual salt profit of the Ministry and the Censorate had found that the actual salt profit was only 1.9 million yuan this year, which is 800,000 yuan less than in previous years.

When all the ruling ministers were surprised to hear this number.

This shrinks too much!

Gao Yue spoke at this time: "The salt law that Yan Xiang implemented in the southeast in the past has been completely corrupted by various towns in Guandong. This matter really does not depend on the responsibility of Zhang Pang, the salt and iron transport envoy. He must have no choice but to do anything."

After saying that, Gao Yue picked up the torn soil and silk on the floor and said to the people present, "I know this kind of cloth pattern, which is what I woven from Huaixi Town."

In addition, Gao Yue also made a judgment: the salt method was very bad, and the salt was sharply reduced. Behind it were Wei Bo and Ziqing's black hands, as well as the salt merchants and officials in the southeast.

The emperor raised his hand and signaled Gao Yue to "spray the silk and decouple" to the ministers in person.

So Gao Yue started talking.

Liu Yan and Xiao Yi have responded to these matters in detail, so he still has a deep understanding of the salt method issue in the Tang Dynasty, so it is naturally not difficult to see through Li Yuanping's tricks.

"Now, there is a strange phenomenon in the salt method in the southeast of Tang. That is, the price of salt is 350 cents, but the market price is only 200 cents. However, the salt merchants are still making huge profits in it. The masters may be surprised, why can salt merchants buy salt far higher than the price of selling salt, and they can still make such a big profit?"

That's right, Gao Yue then pointed out that this is the consequence of the deterioration of the "false estimate method".

How did the salt and li come from? To put it bluntly, the state forced this natural resource into a monopoly system. If the people want to eat salt, they have to pay the country, which constitutes the most important indirect tax in ancient times.

The process is roughly like this. The state has established institutions such as the institute, supervision, yard, and pavilion to take care of the production, sales, transportation and storage of salt. Salt is different from the grain produced in the fields. The cost of growing grain is actually very high. Human resources, animal power, hydraulic power, seeds, fertilizers, etc. What is salt? There are everything in the sea and lake, and at most it costs a boiling cost. The cost of a bucket of salt in the Tang Dynasty (that is, the so-called salt copy) was seven cents. Adding the transportation power money, the average cost is only ten cents. The annual output of sea salt in the Tang Dynasty was more than six million stones alone.

Is it rare to be expensive? It doesn’t exist, and salt profits exist completely without market rules, just like the current housing prices (this article deleted).

But when the salt went from the pavilion to the store and sold it, the price of a bucket of salt became 110 cents, which flew eleven times.

The salt merchants buy salt from the country at a price of 110 cents per bucket according to the price of the market. You must buy it from the market, otherwise it will be a "private salt dealer" who will catch the one who wants to behead him.

Then the salt merchants transferred the salt to the market and sold it to the people. For every 200 yuan, the salt merchants made ninety cents in the middle, while the government had one hundred cents. In short, the officials and businessmen shared the money for the people.

During the Dali period, the imperial court had financial difficulties and everything was expensive. Especially the border troops in the northwest had to give clothes every spring and winter. However, the original main production area of ​​clothing was divided, and Henan was destroyed by the war. The imperial court's cloth and clothing materials continued to rely on the southeast. At that time, Liu Yan, who was in charge of the national economy, made a false estimate method, stipulating that when salt merchants bought salt, half of them had to pay, and half had to pay. In order to increase the enthusiasm of salt merchants to give cloth, Liu Yan said that the price of cloth was fixed to a four-cent of jin of coins, and then used cloth to exchange salt, and each jin of coins was raised up to two hundred coins.

The calculation formula in the middle is not difficult, but it is a bit cumbersome. Simply put, when a salt merchant uses cloth to buy salt, he can earn 800 cents by taking out a piece of cloth.

In this way, in addition to earning 90 cents per bucket of salt from buying and selling, salt merchants can also earn a portion of the salt merchants from the false estimate method, and the salt merchants will become rich;

The court made a lot of money. In the Liu Yan era, the salt profit was claimed to be 6 million yuan per year;

For the common people, although they are undoubtedly an exploited class, the price of 200 cigars per bucket is not too expensive, and they can also ensure their salt intake.

However, it should be clearly seen that Liu Yan's 6 million guan of salt profit was not purely money. According to the false estimation method, half of it is money or light goods, and the other half is cloth and silk. According to the price of the Dali period, it should be three million in four (one piece of cloth and four pieces), that is, seventy-five thousand pieces.

These 750,000 pieces of cloth were given to the border troops in the northwest and the Guandongfang soldiers who were guarding the autumn, effectively enhancing the Tang Dynasty's defense against the invasion of Western Fan at the most critical moment.

If this was the case, Liu Yan's salt law was suitable for the court, salt merchants and the people, and it was the most perfect balance.

So why has the salt profit, the pillar of military and national cost, become the pile of earth, silk, tortoiseshell, and lacquerware in front of the emperor?
Chapter completed!