The Confucius Mansion said it was gone, and the reaction in Shandong was very different.

The news that Zhao Yan confiscated the Kong Mansion is not extremely secretive, and there are still many channels to learn about this news. Of course, it is currently limited to Shandong.

When the people around the Confucius Mansion learned that the Confucius Mansion had been confiscated, they would definitely applaud.

The gentry from the three western prefectures was very worried when they learned that the Confucius Mansion had been circulated.

In the ninth year of Chongzhen, Zhao Yan touched Qingzhou Prefecture. Now the land of the East Three Prefectures belongs to Zhao Yan in name, although Zhao Yan distributed the land to the people who immigrated to the East Three Prefectures.

And now, Zhao Yan reached out to the three Western prefectures.

As soon as the Confucius Mansion was confiscated, almost all the land in Yanzhou Mansion belonged to Zhao Yan. It was not jealous. The gentry in Shandong naturally knew that they were incomparable to Zhao Yan, and there was no reason to jealous. They were just afraid of Zhao Yan's expansion westward on the land.

Although Zhao Yan had already controlled the administrative power of the entire Shandong, there was not much land in the Western Three Prefectures, which was the land of some garrisons in his hands.

Previously, Zhao Yan exchanged land from Liaodong for Qingzhou Prefecture. This one-to-one exchange was a great loss for those landlords and gentry.

If Zhao Yan uses the same method and comes to the three Western prefectures to exchange land, he will not be able to die.

The land of the Western Three Prefectures is not comparable to that of Qingzhou Prefecture. If it is barely acceptable to exchange the land of Qingzhou Prefecture for Liaodong, then it is absolutely unacceptable to exchange the land of the Western Three Prefectures.

For a moment, the landlords and squire in the Western Three Prefectures were very uneasy.

...Zhao Yan and Zhaojiabao are very leisurely. Now, in addition to dealing with some government affairs that others cannot make decisions every day, they just run to your Science and Technology Academy and barracks, and sometimes they go to the school to give a speech.

So Zhao Yan was very leisurely and had a lot of incidents used to search the house.

There are only thirteen core personnel on the fugitive in the Kong Mansion, and most of them are in other provinces, so it is not easy to arrest them.

Zhao Yan felt that it was almost done, and it didn’t matter whether he was caught or not.

"Master, how to deal with these lands in the Confucius Mansion now?" Zhao Quan asked Zhao Yan, "If these five million acres of land are well managed, they can generate a lot of income every year, which means that the cycle is relatively long."

"After all, the land of Xisanfu is not the land of Liaodong. With such a high value, it is too troublesome to operate it yourself. Besides, I don't have the energy to operate it. I will auction all the land! But you can't take it out in one breath, otherwise the land price will plummet." Zhao Yan thought for a while and said, "Also, it is necessary to indicate during the auction that no matter who buys these land, you have to pay taxes every year."

"Will this cause too much land annexation?" Zhao Quan asked hesitantly.

"When we entered the industrial age, land annexation was to a certain extent, and now we have the vast land in Liaodong, and the demand for land is not that great. All we want is to eliminate the tax exemption class. As long as he is willing to pay taxes, it doesn't matter if he owns millions of acres." Zhao Yan said.

Zhao Quan has a deep research on economic operations and quickly understood what Zhao Yan meant.

The real contradiction is not because of the amount of land. As for the entire situation of the Ming Dynasty, land annexation is very serious, and most people do not have land.

But in Shandong, land is enough, as long as you are willing to immigrate, there are land. Among the three northeastern plains, two will be used for agricultural production, while the Sanjiang Plain, known as the Great Northern Wilderness, will establish an ecological protection zone. However, the land in the north is far more than that. Although southern Siberia is relatively cold, it is also suitable for agricultural production.

At the same time, a certain degree of land annexation is conducive to promoting the process of industrialization. Factory needs many workers, and the source of workers is the transformation of the agricultural production population.

Therefore, now the Three East Prefectures have allowed land transactions. As long as farmers transfer to their jobs, they can sell the land they have. However, this kind of transaction is different from the previous land transactions.

In the past, the merger methods of those middle and upper classes were very bad, and they often forced self-cultivated farmers to the point of desperate situation.

This situation is impossible in Shandong. There is no excessive tax collection in Shandong, and there will be no such thing as a political axe to force people to a dead end. At the same time, there will be no money for medical treatment, nor will there be any disease in selling the land, nor will it be like usury.

Therefore, the land transactions in the East Three Prefectures are very mild.

Of course, the land of the East Three Prefectures is not very valuable, because the employment conditions of the East Three Prefectures are very good. If you hire someone to be a tenant, the land rent is very low because the situation in the East Three Prefectures cannot form a high land rent. Tenants rent land for farming production, but Zhao Yan has some land in North Korea and Liaodong. If the land rent is too high, it is better to go to North Korea and Liaodong, so the land rent is very low.

If you hire a long-term worker, the current salary of long-term workers in Shandong is at least one or two taels per month, and it also requires food and accommodation. Moreover, the Labor Contract Law issued by Zhao Yan stipulates that you can only work nine hours a day and you need to pay for overtime.

As far as the cost of a labor force is concerned, ordinary business methods can only guarantee capital.

Therefore, the land prices in the three East Governments are relatively low now, and some demobilized personnel who are unwilling to give up their land even rent the land to others for cultivation in an almost free way.

Although the land rent is low, the land price is not low.

With the development of the economy of the East Three Prefectures, people have money in their hands and are not very willing to sell land. Moreover, buying land is not without profit.

If there is no profit, it is just a general business method. If you plant some fruit trees and breed some animals with high economic benefits, the profit will be very considerable.

There is no other reason, it is just that many people in the East Three Prefectures have money in their pockets.

When you seek medical treatment and go to school, you have surplus food and surplus money at home, and you naturally have surplus demand, but there is a lack of many farm products with higher consumption quality in the market.

There is basically no need to worry about food in Shandong. You can eat as much as you want to eat sweet potato flour, as long as you can hold on. But if you talk about some fruits, there are very few.

Scarcity is precious, and many fruits and high-end agricultural products are very popular in the market, which has become the driving force for land annexation in the Dongsanfu.

Fruit, fishing, and meat are the three categories of high-end agricultural products.

In this case, land prices also rise sharply. In order to pursue efficiency, people are buying land, so the land prices are also high.

When the land price is high, the cost will also be high.

However, agricultural products are currently selling well, and there is still a lot of profit margin for a while, but as the output increases, the profit margin will also decrease.

The final winner will be those groups with more scientific and sophisticated management methods or finding new scarce products, while those with very rough management will be eliminated.

This is a very inevitable rule.

As education continues to improve, people's horizons will continue to improve. Therefore, those who graduate from school rarely go back to be farmers, and they should be farmers, own large-scale land, and use the most advanced technology to produce.

Therefore, land annexation is also an inevitable process in the East Three Prefectures.

The situation of each person's fifty acres of land cannot be maintained forever. People will not be trapped on those fifty acres forever, so Zhao Yan does not restrict the land annexation of the East Three Prefectures now, but if it exceeds fifty acres of land, the agricultural tax will be increased a little.

The three east governments in the future will definitely not be commercial grain bases.

The Northeast and the South will become commercial grain bases. The land of Shandong is not very fertile, and economic crops will dominate. The reason why the Confucius Mansion was robbed by Zhao Yan was because they relied on the large amount of land, violated market laws, and greatly wasted land resources, which made Zhao Yan unable to bear it.

Zhao Yan did not object to the land annexation of the Western Sanfu, as long as you pay taxes.

"Then it's King Lu's turn. Send someone to negotiate with King Lu first and see what his attitude is." Zhao Yan said to Zhao Quan.

"I will send someone tomorrow." Zhao Quan nodded.

"If he is willing to pay taxes, he can lift his ban so that he can walk out of Jinan City." Zhao Yan added that King Lu's land does not need to be confiscated, after all, King Lu does not act like the Confucius Mansion. If he is willing to pay taxes, then the two will be at peace. If he is not well-managed, the three million acres of land will soon be annexed by others.

...In the residence of King Lu in Jinan, the fat King Lu was shocked to meet the officials sent by Zhao Quan.

"I want to pay taxes?" King Lu asked aloud after hearing it for a long time.

"If you pay taxes, you won't lose money. In the current economic form of Shandong, if you sell your land, the price of your land will be much higher than when you bought it before. Even if you don't sell it, the price of the things you planted will be higher." The official said.

"What about others? Should I just want to be with me, or do I have to be with me?" King Lu asked unwillingly, and had already accepted this ruthless fact in his heart.

Zhao Yan, the emperor of Yanjing, dared to take down, let alone the "little vassal king", King Lu was very clear about this point. Although he was very unwilling, if everyone had to make friends with him, he would naturally feel a little balanced.

"The general means that Shandong does not allow a class that uses a lot of land but is tax-free. This year, all landlords in Shandong, regardless of whether they are fame or not, or whether they are princes and nobles, must pay agricultural taxes. If you are willing to accept it, you can enter and exit Jinan City freely tomorrow and go wherever you think."

"Is this what General Jianwei means?" When King Lu heard that he could leave Jinan City, he asked excitedly, afraid that this would be fake.

"Of course it means the general."

"In this way, I am willing to pay taxes." King Lu said excitedly. Money is not too important to King Lu. Even if he sells three million acres of land, it is enough for him to enjoy it for a lifetime, but the biggest regret is that he is born in the royal family and cannot get out of Jinan City.

It's like going to jail!

Being able to leave Jinan City is a dream for King Lu.

...The cooperation of King Lu made Zhao Yan let him go.

However, how to charge this tax, we have to discuss it carefully and come up with a specific standard to avoid blurring the boundaries and unclear collection.

To this end, Zhao Yan held a meeting of the Ministry of Administration.

"This meeting is to discuss the reform plan for Shandong's agricultural tax. Within this year, we will eliminate the privileged class of Shandong's tax exemption. Farmers with 50 acres and below are exempt from taxes, and landlords with more than 50 acres. How to collect agricultural taxes? Let's talk about your opinions first." Zhao Yan said to the officials of the Administrative Department.

"Lord, if we are exempt from 50 acres of taxes, we will lose more than 3 million stones of grain income every year." Zhang Buyun said.

"But we have collected too much from people over fifty acres, and the losses can be made up." Zhao Yan said that Zhao Yan almost looked down on agricultural tax now, but those landlords must be taxed, otherwise the gap between the rich and the poor will easily widen.

Once the gap between the rich and the poor widens, the contradiction will be very sharp.

"If one hundred acres or less, we will collect five cents of silver per mu, and if five hundred acres or less, we will collect seven cents of silver per mu. If one thousand acres or less, we will collect one cent of silver per mu. If one more than five thousand acres, we will collect one cent of silver per mu...."

"It's too little. 100 acres only 5 taels of silver a year, and 500 acres only 35 taels."

"It's a lot. If it's five thousand mu, one mu is one cent and five cents, then it's 750 taels of silver. If you grow grain, at the current price of eight coins per stone, you only earn 4,000 taels a year. If you deduct the long-term labor cost, you will get at least 2,500 taels. If you add 500 taels of other costs, and deduct 750 taels, you will only have a surplus of one or two hundred taels."

"Now what Xisanfu planted is cotton, not wheat."

“…”

The meeting was very competitive, and the standards appeared one by one.

Zhao Yan was very impressed and knew that these standards might not be reliable. After all, it is easy for officials to deviate from reality in this set, and they may overestimate some things or ignore some things.

Agricultural tax is indeed difficult to determine.

If you set it too low, you feel a loss. If you set it too high, you may suffer a loss.

"Lord, I think how to determine the agricultural tax depends on how much land we can tolerate a family owns. Within the amount that can be tolerated, we will give relatively preferential policies, and in groups that exceed the tolerance limit, we will give high tax policies." Zhang Buyun quickly saw the problem.

"Yeah, it's not bad." Zhao Yan felt very correct when he heard this, and immediately turned around.

Under the tolerant number of acres, even if preferential conditions are given, the gap between the rich and the poor will not be too large. And those that exceed the tolerant number of acres must be set at a high tax burden.

If they can survive under high tax conditions, prove that their business methods are excellent and can create higher benefits, then this is the object that encourages them to continue to exist.

"Master, what is your boundary?" Zhang Buyun asked.

"Right 500 acres!" Zhao Yan thought for a while and said, 500 acres should be about the same. After all, the agricultural productivity is not high now, and there are too many acres of land, so long-term workers will definitely need to do it.

When productivity increases, this limit can be expanded. With the development of technology, if you use mechanical farming, a person can manage thousands of acres of land.
To be continued...