After broadcasting the ancient times live, I handed the system over to the state.

Zhu Qinggu also searched on Baidu and quickly found a picture with the names of the tax types and so on written on it.

These taxes remind countless people of the days when they were skinned alive and exploited.

In ancient times, ordinary people were also afraid of tax officials, as they had to pay all kinds of taxes as long as they were alive.

"There was another type called 'corruption fines,' which was also a major part of tax revenue. All the silver money confiscated from criminals was included in it. This led to some places even committing wrongful convictions in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty in order to create corruption fines. Later, the Wanli Emperor abolished this system."

"There was also the mining tax. Zhu Yuanzhang disliked the mining tax because he felt it caused too much harm to the common people. The conflict over the mining tax only erupted in the late Ming Dynasty. The emperor wanted to bypass the bureaucracy and collect taxes directly, which resulted in a struggle between the emperor, his ministers, and the merchants."

"I wonder which unfilial descendant is so greedy that he even takes this little bit of exploitation. Has he really been short of food and drink?" Zhu Yuanzhang scolded.

"In general, as everyone has seen, the Ming Dynasty's fiscal system was relatively well-regulated, so why did the Ming Dynasty's finances collapse?"

"It's very simple. It's just that income doesn't cover expenditures, tax revenue has plummeted, and fiscal management is poor."

"The Ming Dynasty was an era where money was spent like water. Where did the money come from? The first place was education. As early as the Hongwu period, Zhu Yuanzhang required schools to be established in various places and Confucian scholars to spread the teachings of the sages. The prosperity of schools in the Ming Dynasty far exceeded that of the Tang and Song Dynasties."

“He had prefectural schools and county schools, and he also encouraged the establishment of clan schools, community schools, and martial arts schools in the private sector.”

The scholars under the sky all began to praise Zhu Yuanzhang.

The previous expulsion of the Tartars and restoration of China had already earned them a lot of goodwill, even though he came from a humble background and later became emperor.

(Song Dynasty, Zhao Zhen: Emperor Hongwu also promoted culture and education; the prosperity of culture and education leads to the prosperity of the nation.)

Zhu Yuanzhang also saw what Zhao Zhen said on the sky, but he didn't care at all about what Zhao Zhen said.

If it could bring prosperity to the country, how come the Ming Dynasty still perished?

"Zhu Yuanzhang also attached great importance to water conservancy construction. Having farmed, Zhu Yuanzhang knew very well that the harvest of an acre of land was also related to water. Wherever water conservancy was well-constructed, the grain yield would never be low."

"Even at the end of the Ming Dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Chongzhen, the emperor was so poor that the empress had to weave cloth in the palace to sell in order to make ends meet. The emperor's dragon robes were patched, and he even managed the Yellow River twice."

At this point, Zhu Yuanzhang could only sigh, wondering what Chongzhen's character was like, but that he had already done so much.

"The Ming Dynasty also attached great importance to some basic guarantees. For example, each place had four famine relief granaries all year round, and local officials also had to report on the water conditions and maintain the granary reserves. The almshouses of the Song and Yuan dynasties also existed in the Ming Dynasty, and even one was set up in each county."

"These things are actually not the most; the most are the funds that the royal family and relatives have consumed."

“A son would have several grandsons, and the grandsons would have several great-grandsons. By the time of Chongzhen, the number of registered grandmasters had reached 330,000, which put enormous financial pressure on local and central governments.”

“There were relatively few members of the imperial clan in the early Ming Dynasty, so the finances could naturally support them. But what about all those members of the imperial clan?”

"How many? Three hundred and thirty thousand members of the imperial clan?" Zhu Yuanzhang never imagined that so many members of the imperial clan would emerge.

He felt that since the Zhu family was in power, their descendants should enjoy wealth and honor forever. But if that was how they were going to enjoy wealth and honor, he thought of the late Yuan Dynasty, when those landlords who did not engage in production took away the land.

Therefore, they were so poor that they had nowhere to stand.

The sky had previously mentioned some coincidences: the Ming Dynasty rose from peasant uprisings and also fell due to peasant uprisings.

If there's no land left and no fields to cultivate, won't they rebel?

The thought that he had established the Ming Dynasty, only to find himself no different from the Yuan Dynasty Tartars, nearly made Zhu De choke.

"Does Zhu Yuanzhang really use the national treasury to support these members of the imperial clan?" Li Shimin pondered, wondering if the fiefdoms he had previously intended to grant to his children would end up like this.

Actually, Old Li didn't need to worry at all. The Xuanwu Gate Succession Law of the Li Dynasty meant that their royal family had never had many members.

"The problem of the imperial clan is not easy to solve." Liu Che pondered this question, his brows furrowed tightly.

At this time, Liu Che had not yet issued the Edict of Grace. After Tianmu brought up this issue, he also began to think about what solutions there might be.

As a result, there are currently not many methods or experiences to offer.

Unless you drive people to rebellion, then confiscate their property and abolish their fiefdoms.

But I can't do that every time. Even if I did, what about the emperors who came after me? What else could they do?

The Song Dynasty emperors were surprised, even envious, of seeing so many members of the Ming Dynasty's imperial family...

Those few particularly cowardly and incompetent emperors were all incredibly prolific—no, Ninth Sister couldn't have children.

In this situation, Zhao Zhen found a delicate balance.

Zhu Di was also shocked, especially after seeing so many members of the imperial clan, and unlike his brothers, who were required to guard the border.

Zhu Di knew in his heart that he was using a "banquet to release military power" tactic in another way. He was now using generous sums of money to support these members of the imperial clan, proving that he was not the same as Zhu Yunwen and that he would not exterminate these princes. He hoped that the people would submit to him.

But now the number of members of the imperial clan far exceeds his imagination. Could it be that their Zhu family has also produced a Prince Jing of Zhongshan? And had more than a hundred children?

Zhu Biao closed his eyes, his face looking rather grim. "Father, if there are ten princes, and each of them has five children, and each of those five children has five children, and so on, the population would probably be no less than 300,000!"

Zhu Yuanzhang was already exhausted, and he himself did not expect that his descendants would be so prolific.

……

"This doesn't even include female members. If female members are included, the Ming Dynasty royal family probably numbered between 700,000 and 1 million. These people didn't pay taxes, lived luxurious lives, but made no contribution to society."

In the novel "The Ming Dynasty 1566", Hai Rui said that these princes and dukes were everywhere, and they occupied estates everywhere. They owned more than half of the country but did not have to pay taxes. The common people could not cultivate more than half of the country's land, but they had to pay taxes for the entire country.

"The emperor wanted to grant Prince Fu, Wanli’s most beloved son, 40,000 hectares of fertile land. However, the ministers objected, so the amount was reduced to 20,000 hectares. Since the land in Henan was not enough, it was supplemented with land from Shandong and Hubei."

"That's equivalent to occupying three-thousandths of the country's farmland. So you can see that the peasant uprisings in the late Ming Dynasty were most frequent in that area, which was also where the imperial family had the most members."

"If we can't survive, we have no choice but to rebel!"