What made Shen Shixing restless was not that Gao Shixing was qualified enough for Wei Xuezeng to come forward to help him—although this in itself was also a very representative thing.

Who was Wei Xuezeng? During the Longqing period, Gao Gong returned to the Dynasty, and was the second assistant and the head of the Ministry of Shangshu, at that time Wei Xuezeng was already the left servant of the Ministry of Officials, and was the actual "first assistant" of Gao Gong.

In other words, he is of the same generation as Gao Gong. It's just that his official luck is not very good, if it develops normally at that time, he actually has a good hope of entering the cabinet before Xu Guo, who knows...... Ding was worried.

Later, when he returned to the dynasty for a few years, he also experienced things such as high pragmatism and other things, and thought that this time it was time to enter the cabinet, but not only did he not enter the cabinet, but he was also worried, and finally led to the current situation.

When he finished worrying about returning to the dynasty, Yanjing was full of radishes and pits, and Zhang Siwei really couldn't get him back to Yanjing (his qualifications were too high, and it was impossible to demote him to be a waiter). In desperation, he had no choice but to let him go to Nanjing to serve as a Nanjing household secretary first, and then transfer back north when the Beijing division became vacant.

Unexpectedly, Zhang Siwei was worried about himself next.

In any case, Wei Xuezeng's position within the Shixue School is relatively special, even if he is not one of the current Shixue Sange Elders, but his status within the Shixue School is definitely not weaker than the current Xu Guo, Zhang Xueyan and Wu Dui.

Gao Shishi's ability to invite Wei Xuezeng to stand up and do things for him is enough to show that the political resources left to him by Gao Gong, Guo Pu, and Zhang Siwei have been completely controlled by him.

It can be said that with Wei Xuezeng's upward slack, Shen Shixing's plan to "weigh high pragmatism and weigh two catties" has been completed, and he already knows the strength of Gao pragmatism, and knows that his actual position within the Shixue school will not be weaker than Xu Guo, the nominal party leader.

But for Gao Shixing's current strength, Shen Shixing is also mentally prepared, although it will make him sigh when it is really in front of him, but he will not feel frightened.

What made him so frightened that he was restless was the spearhead of Wei Xuezeng's sparseness.

At first glance, this was the impeachment of Pan Sheng, but Shen Shixing keenly found that it was not Wei Xuezeng's focus. Wei Xuezeng actually only impeached Pan Sheng by the way, what he really wanted to do was to reformulate the tax rate in Yingtian and Zhejiang.

The tax rate of the Ming Dynasty was basically set by Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang period, it did not have national uniformity like the tax rate of later generations, but one tax for one place, based on the economic development level of various places at the time of the founding of the country, and the subsequent adjustment was very small.

Theoretically, with the development of the social economy, this fixed tax system will surely accumulate more and more problems over time. In this case, it is necessary to adjust and adjust more so that the tax rate is always in line with the actual level and affordability of various places. In some places, the tax rate can be slightly increased if the development is fast; In some areas, the development is slow, and the tax rate should be slightly lowered.

But with the Ming court's usual rigidity on financial issues, this idea is clearly a dream. Simply put? No matter which place your imperial court wants to raise the tax rate, the local area (this county, this government, and the political envoy of this cloth) will inevitably jump out of a large number of people to cry and sell miserably.

Why does Daming collect less and less taxes, which is also one of the reasons.

Specific to Yingtian, Zhejiang and other places, raising tax rates is a taboo topic that no one dared to touch in the past.

Why? Because although these regions are the most economically developed, they have also cultivated the most officials, and the bigwigs in the court have grabbed a lot of them, and you want to raise the tax rate in his hometown? You've eaten the bear's heart and leopard's gall!

Even if the imperial court came up with the regional problem of balancing the selection of officials from the north and south of the imperial examination, this situation did not change very much, because the southeastern officials relied on the strongest economic region in the country, and the big businessmen in the region all funded the "development" of local officials behind their backs in order to ensure that their own interests were not harmed.

So this has led to some very bad results: everyone's backgrounds are different (the south list looks down on the north list, unless you are Sanding Jia), and now the additional support received by the two sides is not equal, that is, of course, it is easier for the south list to get out of the way.

As a result, two hundred years have passed, and although the southeast region is rich, its tax rate has not been raised, but some areas have actually lowered some of it.

However, this "good situation" finally loosened a little after the high arch promoted the commercial tax reform.

The first is the issue of the collection of tariffs. Gao Gong presided over the opening of the sea in Longqing, and he didn't dare to make a big deal at first, but he just carried out a pilot project in Yuegang, and used the opening of the sea in exchange for the collection of tariffs - the local people still went to sea before, but after all, it was illegal to say. The opening of the sea by the high arch is actually a sum of money in exchange for their right to legally go to sea and do business.

The rate of this tariff has been said before, not only is it set very low, but also Gao Pragmatic takes into account the problem of "social pressure", and also suggests a set of methods for Gao Gong to be taxed by ship rather than by cargo. In fact, this method secretly gives shipowners room to legally avoid taxes, and the purpose is also to prevent the customs agency from being collapsed and blown away by the coastal maritime merchants during the initial period.

The road should be walked step by step, and the meal should be eaten in one bite. The high arch then slowly expanded the "plate" on this basis, and at the beginning there was only one location advantage that was relatively general, and the port was not wide, and gradually developed into a long list of ports to the present.

Guo Pu's administration is more stable, and Gao Gong is in a state of depression and Cao Cao, and there is no pioneering other roads, but he continues to expand the number of ports.

But when it came to Zhang Siwei, the last time he took advantage of the situation to make a deal with the Xin School, to open a commercial tax in the southeast coastal area - this is land, not tariff. The rate of this commercial tax is still very low, on average, only one hundred and three percent (three percent).

However, just this 3 percent commercial tax has caused the southeast to complain - of course, there is no need to go into detail about who is complaining, this is something that everyone knows.

That incident brought a lot of pressure to Shen Shixing, Yu Youding and others, and the reason why Yu Youding later supported Liu Shouyou was that in addition to the tendency of the two factions to fight among the two factions, the pressure brought to him by the southeast was also a very important factor.

Similarly, Shen Shixing did not explicitly oppose this matter, but chose to acquiesce, precisely because he knew these inside stories.

It can be seen that as long as the imperial court considers imposing additional taxes on the southeast coast, no matter what method and name it uses, it will eventually lead to a backlash. The first people affected by this rebound were officials from the southeast such as Shen Shixing and Yu Youding.

They were the agents of these people in the imperial court, and at this time, of course, they had to come forward to protect the interests of the "owner".

It is not for nothing that the level of commercial development along the southeast coast was called the "germ of capitalism" in later generations, and this kind of gold-dollar politics itself can be regarded as one of the characteristics of capitalism.

This time, Wei Xuezeng's sparseness is the tax rate in the southeast. And Wei Xuezeng is particularly bold, he is not a pilot like Gao Gong when he opened the sea, and he deliberately set a tax law with loopholes to drill, nor does he achieve his goals through political transactions like Zhang Siwei.

He actually planned to take this Pan Sheng incident as an opportunity to directly attack Tian Fu in the southeast!

He actually wants to adjust the unreasonable low-land endowment policy in some areas of the southeast!

Shen Shixing was stunned for a while, his head buzzed, and the sound finally converged into one sentence: Wei Xuezeng, you want to turn the sky upside down!

Tian Fu, Tian Fu, you dare to move?!

Yes, the richest people in the southeast are not big landlords but big merchants, especially sea merchants, but ...... In addition to the strange thing of high pragmatism in this world, which sea merchant does not have a large amount of fertile land?

You have to ask why the maritime merchants also have a large amount of fertile land? Joke, there was not a lot of fertile land in the Ming Dynasty, and your social attribute was that of a simple businessman, not a landlord and gentry!

Who doesn't know how much social status the merchants of the Ming Dynasty had? If you are not a landlord and gentry, what do you rely on to deal with officials?

When you are a highly pragmatic person, you are a practical sect, and you don't worry about the problem of the sect at all?

Gao Pragmatic is not worried about the family, because his family is a eunuch, and his uncle is Wen Zhenggong, and he himself is still the six champions of "the true leader in the past two hundred years"!

Who are you, and worthy of him?

Therefore, Wei Xuezeng's hand shocked Shen Shixing beyond measure.

But the question is, did Wei Xuezeng dare to make such a big move alone? Who is standing behind him? What is the fundamental purpose of this?

Judging from the current situation, the person behind Wei Xuezeng is highly pragmatic nine times out of ten, only he has the courage to dare to make such a move, and the others ...... Hehe, it's not that I, Shen Shixing, underestimated the heroes of the world, this kind of thing is not at all dared to do it except for being pragmatic, and even dared not mention it!

However, does Gao Pragmatic really want to take this opportunity to adjust the southeast tax rate? Is he so sure?

He should know very well that if he starts from this aspect, the struggle between the Heart School and their Real School will have to start in an all-round way, and not only will it start, but there will even be no room for reconciliation - the money behind the scenes has all been offended by you, I can't fight if I don't fight, I can't fight to the death!

Shen Shixing was so anxious that not only did cold sweat break out on his forehead, but even the soles of his feet were wet after a while.

He suddenly regretted it now, he thought that the Shixue School had suddenly lost its core this time, and the "double core" between Xu Guo and Gao Pragmatism would inevitably be unstable, and there would even be a certain scale of infighting, which was a good time for him to fish in troubled waters.

Who would have thought that Xu Guo would have no name at all, Gao Pragmatic seemed to be quiet in normal times, but in fact, his position within the Shixue School was very stable, and once something happened, he would immediately be able to mobilize resources and concentrate firepower to fight back.

And what I didn't expect was a highly pragmatic reaction, obviously this kid has always been cautious, but this time it exploded as if he had eaten gunpowder. It's even better now, he even thinks about Tian Fu in the southeast!

Why? Did he know about the Zhejiang Merchants Alliance?

Thinking of the fact that the Zhejiang Merchants Alliance planned to start a war with Gao Pragmatic in the southeast shopping mall, Shen Shixing suddenly felt that he had grasped the key - yes, the Zhejiang Merchants Alliance wanted to start a war with Jinghua, and Gao Pragmatic naturally refused to sit still, but Gao Pragmatic's foundation was in the north, and he obviously did not have an advantage in the war with the Zhejiang Merchants Alliance in the southeast.

In this case, first come up with a set of "chaotic fists" to stir up the situation and catch the Zhejiang Entrepreneurs Alliance off guard, so why not?

Shen Shixing forced himself to think from the perspective of high pragmatism, if he was highly pragmatic, what was the purpose of this hand now?

After thinking about it for a while, he felt that he had gained something: I will muddy the waters in the southeast, so that the whole court will focus on the tax rate issue in the southeast, and then Pan Sheng's matter will become a trivial matter, and the heart school will definitely not have the spare strength to estimate a mere Pan Sheng in order to ensure that the foundation of the southeast is not bad, and it is very likely that he will give up Pan Sheng and keep the foundation of the southeast first.

In this way, Pan Sheng will definitely die, and this old position will definitely not wait for Wang Xijue to take over, and when the time comes, it will be cheaper to make a high pragmatic arrangement under the chaos. At the same time, the situation that no one dares to mention the southeast tax rate has also been broken, even if this incident is just a high-level pragmatic false shot, it does not necessarily have to be really effective, but as long as there is the first, second, third and even countless times, it is not surprising.

If you continue like this, sooner or later, you will be able to succeed in high pragmatism!

Shen Shixing wanted to understand this, but he only felt that his hands and feet were numb, and his mouth was smoking, and he didn't care about anything, so he picked up a cup of cold tea that had already been put to the cold and poured it.