"Brat, what nonsense are you talking about!”
The whole scene exploded in an instant. Li Shiming, Zhangsun Wuji, Fang Xuanling, Wei Zheng, Du Ruhui, and the others stood up and looked at Lin Yi angrily.
Even Cheng Yaojin, Qin Qiong, and Old Yuchi were stunned. They didn't think that Lin Yi would be so blunt and say that the current policy of the Great Tang was a pile of dog shit. Wasn't this the same as slapping Li Shimin and the other ministers in the face?
Moreover, it was a face-to-face slap!
"Brat, do you know what you're saying?”
Li Shiming's face was dark, his eyes filled with malice. If Lin Yi didn't give a good answer, he would lose his head.
He didn't expect Lin Yi to be so calm, like he wouldn't change even if Mount Tai collapsed in front of him.
"If Your Majesty asks this question, this commoner will naturally answer it. The Great Tang's current policy of governing the country is a pile of dog shit, riddled with holes. Even if you ask ten times, this commoner's answer will be the same: holy shit!”
"Good, good, good. What a pile of dog sh * t. Explain yourself clearly. If you don't, I'll sacrifice you to the flag today!”
Lin Yi stood up, his hands behind his back, looking relaxed under the hostile gazes.
Next, Lin Yi gave Li Shimin and the other ministers a hard slap in the face in terms of land policy, tax policy, administrative structure, military management, and so on.
The first problem was land. As everyone knew, land was the lifeblood of a feudal dynasty. Only with land could one grow grain, and only after the grain was harvested could one pay taxes. Eighty percent of the Great Tang's taxes came from land taxes, which were also agricultural taxes.
But the Great Tang's land policy itself was problematic.
The Tang Dynasty implemented the land grant system, which was a kind of public ownership of land. The so-called land grant system referred to a person who obtained a piece of land from the government after he was born. He would engage in farming all his life and pay taxes. After the person died, the land would be taken back and redistributed by the government.
According to the regulations, when a person was born, the government would allocate 100 mu of land to him. After he died, the land would be taken back.
However, the problem was that it was easy to give away the land, but it was difficult to take it back.
People would always try their best to hoard the land and hide it.
There was a strange rule in the Great Tang. Many nobles and aristocratic families did not need to pay land taxes, and neither did monks and soldiers. Thus, many farmers sold their land to aristocratic families, monks, and soldiers and then rented it back as so-called tenant farmers. This way, they did not have to pay taxes to the country and only had to pay 30% of the original tax to the nobles.
As a result, countless plots of land disappeared from the household register and flowed into the underground market. Nobles, aristocratic families, and monks became big landowners. The country could not collect taxes, and the national treasury was empty. They had no choice but to increase taxes. Then, the burden on the commoners would only become heavier.
Thus, the Great Tang's public ownership of land was an unrealistic, utopian land policy.
The land policy and tax policy had caused the Great Tang's treasury to be empty and its economy to decline. This was the hardest part of this pile of dog shit.
During the reign of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, the highest population figure was close to nine million households, and the population reached 46 million.
Ten years after Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty counted the population, during the reign of Emperor Gaozu of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 625 AD), the population statistics fell to only two million. In other words, in ten years, the population of the Great Tang had decreased by more than seventy percent.
There was definitely something wrong with this data. 70% of the population had disappeared in ten years. Unless there was a plague, even the cruelest battle could not do it.
Then, why was this?
It was simple. The Great Tang's population statistics were too perfunctory. Many people had disappeared from the household register in order to avoid taxes, taking their land with them.
Next was the administrative structure. The Great Tang implemented the Three Provinces and Six Ministries system, and implemented the two-level system of prefectures and counties throughout the country.
The appointment of officials in the Great Tang was directly done by the Ministry of Personnel. The officials of the subordinate prefectures and counties were also appointed by the Ministry of Personnel, and local politics relied more on the central government.
There were more than 360 provinces in the Great Tang that were directly governed by the central government. Each province had a provincial governor, but they had very little power, which resulted in a phenomenon of low efficiency.
More than 300 states all belonged to the central government. How could the central government manage them?
There was no telephone or internet in the Tang Empire. It usually took three months for a letter to be sent from Chang 'an to Jiangnan. It took half a year for officials to be transferred from one state to another. This kind of second-level administrative structure could be said to be very backward.
Next was the management of the army. The Tang Dynasty also implemented the military system. There were general offices (governor offices) all over the country. These offices were originally only responsible for military affairs and not civil affairs, but their status was above that of the state. Some Governor Houses were stationed in a state and controlled several surrounding states at the same time, forming a complicated structure.
This kind of structure had almost no effect on the civil affairs in the early Tang Dynasty, but it actually carried some signs of a military governor system. The reason why the Mid-Tang Dynasty adopted the military governor system, in addition to the An Lushan Rebellion, was that the area of the states in the Tang Dynasty was too small and the number was too large, making it inconvenient for the central government to directly manage them.
There was another point. The military system was a system of both soldiers and farmers. The central government would grant each army a certain amount of land. The soldiers would be soldiers during wartime and would usually be farmers. The food produced would be used as military expenses. Only during wartime when the production of soldiers could not keep up with the military expenses would the central government's financial taxes be used to make up for it.
This system looked wonderful, but its flaws were also very obvious.
This military service model of combining agriculture and war was very effective at the beginning of its establishment. However, as the organization aged and the soldiers became more and more lazy, the military system would inevitably be as inefficient as state-owned enterprises. The entire system would become bloated, and the soldiers would not be able to farm or fight. A huge problem had appeared in the military system.
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