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It's almost the Mid-Autumn Festival, and on the 12th day of August, Xu Yingjie and Yang Chao, the attendants of the left and right parts of the household, both went to the Pujia Hall to ask to see the Son of Heaven.

Seeing this posture, Qin Mu knew that the two of them must have important affairs, so he immediately asked the little eunuch to pass the two in.

After the ceremony, Xu Yingjie immediately said: "Your Majesty, according to the reports of the regular closing positions in various places, the grain prices in various places this year have been falling since the summer harvest, and now the summer tax has been paid, but the grain prices still have no signs of rising. ”

When Qin Mu heard this, his brows couldn't help frowning slightly, and he asked, "How much has the price of grain dropped now?" ”

"Qi Gong Xià, now the rice on the market has been as low as sixty-five Wen."

"So little? What's going on, isn't there any grain in the Changkura in various places? ”

At the beginning, it was proposed to establish a permanent liquidation, first, to improve Daqin's grain strategic reserve system, and if there was a famine, it could be better and faster to provide relief and prevent chaos due to disasters.

The second function is to monitor the grain prices in various places in real time, harvest grain in good years, and prevent grain from hurting farmers; Grain is harvested in a famine year to prevent grain prices from being too high.

Xu Yingjie replied: "Thanks, in recent years, Daqin can be described as a smooth wind and rain, there are relatively few disasters and famines, with the gradual recovery of people's livelihood, plus corn, sweet potatoes and other new crops are commonly planted in the country, according to the results of household statistics, now the grain output of Daqin has actually been more than one-third more than the total grain output at the peak of the Ming Dynasty;

The amount of money withheld by the prefectures and counties for grain collection is as much as 30,000 yuan and as little as 8,700 dragon coins, which can only play a partial role in regulating and controlling the current total grain output, but in fact it is difficult to increase the grain in an all-round way.

It is already August now, and in more than a month, it is no surprise that the autumn grain will be bumper again, if it is not regulated, the price of grain will only be even lower, in view of the severity of the situation. The minister and Yang Shilang had to come to see His Majesty in order to be able to regulate it in advance. ”

During the Tang Zhenguan period, the history books clearly recorded that the rice was four money, and the warehouses around the country were real, and the history books called it a prosperous age. But in fact, anyone who has a little bit of a market economy concept knows that the lower the price, the better;

It is not an exaggeration to say that the grain is injuring the peasants and may even lead to riots. In addition, food prices have been greatly reduced. In addition to hurting farmers, it can also trigger the price of other commodities to follow.

In a normally developed market economy, prices will definitely not become cheaper and cheaper, and once this phenomenon occurs, there is only one possibility, that something has gone wrong in the market economy.

Only when people's incomes are reasonably proportional to the price increase can this kind of market economy develop healthily, otherwise it will inevitably lead to strict deflation.

Don't think that in ancient times there was no inflation or deflation to lead to economic crises, there were. And it's all the time.

It's just that there was a lack of theoretical knowledge in this area in ancient times, and there was no such word as "economic crisis", but if you look at the history books in detail, you can still see it clearly. There have been so-called "economic crises" in almost every dynasty.

Once deflation is triggered by low prices, the whole economy will stagnate, and the reason is simple. The peasants grew grain, but they could not sell it, and sold it at a low price. But if you don't profit more because of the bumper harvest, then who still has the enthusiasm to grow grain?

This is especially true for other commodities, such as cloth, where textile mills produce a large amount of cloth, but they cannot make money because the price of cloth is too low, or even lose money. Is there anyone who is willing to increase investment and increase the scale of production?

The stagnation of production will inevitably lead to the bankruptcy of a large number of workshops, the loss of a large number of people, and the terrible process of deflation, which is no less than inflation.

It was precisely in recognition of this that Xu Yingjie and Yang Chao, the two members in charge of the household department, both came to Qin Mu.

Qin Mu pondered for a moment before asking, "Do the two Qing families have a countermeasure?" ”

This time, Yang Chao replied: "Your Majesty, the household department has urgently discussed this matter, and the ministers and others believe that to solve this problem, it is far from enough to rely on the regular closing of the warehouse to collect grain, and the only way is to increase market demand, and only in this way can it be expected to increase grain prices." ”

In this agricultural-oriented era, food prices have the greatest influence on other prices, and if they do not rise, the risk of deflation is very high.

But it is not easy to raise the price of food, because with so many people, you can't just have a large number of people to consume food, let alone buy grain to burn.

Qin Mu's mind turned sharply, and suddenly he had a gain, so he asked: "Japan has a large population, do you know what the price of grain in Japan is today?" ”

Xu Yingjie was in charge of commerce, and obviously tried his best in terms of grain prices, so he immediately replied: "At present, there are some merchant ships transporting grain to Japan for sale, and according to the information provided by these merchant ships, the price of grain in Japan is about 100 wen for rice. Merchants transported grain from Daqin to Japan, and in addition to the transportation costs, the doumi could earn about fifteen yuan. ”

Qin Mu said: "In this way, the left and right households have a lot of money to spare, so they will take out a sum of money as a special fund to buy a large amount of grain and sell it to Japan, and then buy cash crops such as cotton from Japan at a high price." ”

"陛xià, this"

Even Xu Yingjie couldn't understand Qin Mu's purpose for a while. Obviously, even if you don't lose money by doing this, I'm afraid it will be in vain, and it will not be possible to make much profit.

"Whoever controls finance and currency controls the whole world; Whoever controls the grain will control everyone. Do you understand? ”

Xu Yingjie thought for a moment and immediately said: "His Majesty means to resell the surplus grain of Daqin to Japan, and then guide the Japanese to grow cash crops at a high price, so that Japan will rely on Daqin in terms of food, so as to achieve the goal of better controlling Japan." ”

"Yes! In doing so, first, we can ensure that domestic food prices will not go down, and second, we can slowly control Japan, and Japan must rely on our Great Qin in terms of finance, currency, and food, and can also influence the direction of Japan without a single soldier. ”

"Your Majesty, rest assured, this matter will be done immediately, but after all, this can't be done overnight, and letting too much food pour into Japan at one time is probably easy to arouse the vigilance of the Tokugawa shogunate, and it is necessary to boil frogs in warm water, so that some distant water will not quench the thirst."

At this point, Qin Mu also admitted that it would only be bad if he was too anxious about Japan's control plan, and he asked: "The two Qing family came to see me, and there must have been some countermeasures, please say it." ”

"Your Majesty, the merchants and ministers of the Ministry of Household Affairs think that if they want to rapidly increase the domestic demand for food and raise the price of grain, there is only one way, to build a large number of buildings, such as increasing the construction of domestic roads."

Large-scale wars consume the most grain and grass, and large-scale construction is the same, from this point of view, Xu Yingjie's countermeasures are at least symptomatic.

Yang Chao continued: "Your Majesty, if a large number of prisoners of war are used to build roads, the biggest consumption is food, and the expenditure of silver is not large. The state treasury is expected to have a surplus of at least 40 million dragon coins this year, so it is not a problem to allocate a sum of money to buy grain and build roads. ”

Prisoners of war only need to be provided with rations to build roads, and there is no need to pay wages, and all kinds of stones and asphalt used for road construction can also be mined and transferred by prisoners of war, without additional payment.

From this point of view, large-scale road construction is indeed a feasible strategy, which can not only quickly raise domestic food prices and prevent deflation, but also speed up the construction of infrastructure in Daqin, laying a solid foundation for future economic take-off.

"His Majesty, Chen Jian yì requisitioned 800,000 prisoners of war from Jiaozhi and Dongwu for road construction, in addition to the asphalt road from Chengdu to Xijing, which was originally planned to start construction after winter, the road from Changsha to Nanning could be started at the same time. In addition, Chenjian built another asphalt road from Nanning Mansion to Shangjun City, and one from Kunming to Wangbencheng. ”

Good guy, when Qin Mu heard that he was going to requisition 800,000 prisoners, he couldn't help but be a little dumbfounded, should he say that the household department was rich and powerful, or was it extraordinary?

The Shangjun City mentioned by Yang Chao refers to the original capital of Cochin, Thang Long Mansion, which later became Hanoi. Wang Bencheng is the original capital of Dongwu Ava. After Daqin conquered these places, they were officially renamed.

The two roads from Nanning to Shangjun City and Kunming to Wangbencheng, especially the latter, have extraordinary significance, and can be said to be an indispensable strategic passage for Great Qin to firmly control the Indochina Peninsula.

This road has long been in Qin Mu's planning, but it turned out that because the people's livelihood has not been restored, it has not had time to be implemented.

Now Yang Chao proposed, in addition to agreeing that the passage from Kunming to Wang Bencheng is indeed important, it is also not without the meaning of voting for the favor of the Son of Heaven, which will make it much easier for the household department to get through.

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PS: Thank you for your support, I have voted 79 votes today, and to be honest, it was an unexpected surprise for me. In the past few months, the number of monthly tickets on the first day was only three or so dozen, and the enthusiasm of the brothers and sisters today is a bit surprising. According to the promise made in the morning, one more chapter will be added for every hundred chapters, because there is no manuscript in hand now, and there is a sudden sense of urgency.

But don't worry, I don't want to be the person who broke his word and got fat, brothers although they smashed the ticket hard, the more tickets, the more happy the mood, the higher the efficiency of the code word, let my heart fly, let the monthly pass fly, I'm not afraid that I want to fly higher, I want to make headlines (to be continued......)