Chapter 22 first quarter

Among Wang Anshi's reforms, the most perfect in theory and amazed by later generations is the Qingmiao method. When Wang Anshi put out his theories, many people in the empire did not take it seriously. The wealth in the world is limited, if there is too much in the treasury, there will be less in the hands of the common people.You, Wang Anshi, are not a magician, you can turn money into a hen, a chicken lays an egg, and an egg lays a chicken. Wang Anshi smartly held a magic wand and used the young crop method. Farmers borrowed money from the government when they were leaning in, and repaid it in the autumn harvest. The interest was not heavy, only two cents (compared to the private usury at that time), which could not only help farmers tide over the difficulties, but also increase the government's income.

Theoretically speaking, the Green Crop Law only harms the interests of those usurers who cannibalize people. The Green Crop Law is equivalent to stripping the interests of those people and letting farmers and the government share them. Thousands of years later, some people praised Wang Jiefu's genius idea, which is very in line with modern economic theory. Compared with his contemporaries, he stood taller and saw farther. In fact, Lao Wang’s Green Crop Law is also not the first creation. The Li Tang Dynasty implemented the method of government lending usury to increase income on a small scale when the pockets were shy in the middle and late stages. It’s just that Wang Anshi’s reform has a wide range of implementation and a perfect system, of course. is unprecedented.

For a long time, Lao Wang was reluctant to go to Beijing to be a phoenix tail, but preferred to stay in the local area to be a chicken head, because in the local area, he could conduct clinical experiments on his reform recipes.When Lao Wang was the county magistrate of Yin County, he tried the green crop method on his land, and the results were insanely good. The farmers got over the difficulties, the government increased their income, the rich loan sharks stared at them, and there were very few dead and bad debts. This strengthened his determination to implement the Young Crop Law throughout the country.

However, the theoretically foolproof policy has been practiced all over the country, and there are many complaints. It is considered by the old party to be the most harmful cancer in the reform.Why is this so?Because several major problems emerged during the implementation process that Wang Anshi could not solve: First, grassroots officials have raised interest rates layer by layer, which has become an important means for corrupt officials to amass money.It turns out that the central government only charged two percent of the interest, but some places received six or seven percent, or shortened the repayment period to raise interest in disguise. The empire had no effective control mechanism for this.

The second is that in order to complete the assessment of administrative goals, the administrative departments at all levels, and in order to highlight political achievements, the leaders of the departments force the rich farmers to take out loans when they do not need to borrow money, which in disguise increases the burden on the farmers. Third, if floods and droughts occur, farmers in natural disaster areas who have lost their crops are unable to repay their loans, and the government will forcibly collect their debts. These problems would not have been encountered when Wang Anshi was working as the county magistrate in Yin County to set up an experimental field: first, Lao Wang was a clean and honest official and did not seek money; Qian; Third, Wang Anshi had no serious natural disasters during his tenure in Yin County, so the dead debt rate was naturally low.Besides, Wang Jiefu, who has a clean sleeve, will not force farmers who have not paid their accounts to become refugees.

In fact, the sophisticated Sima Junshi has seen very clearly the fatal flaws of the Young Crop Method.The words he said may be careless, but to the point: ——The common people will be reviled by the world for lending usury to rich and unkind families, let alone the government? Although your interest rate is low, is there any essential difference between fifty steps and one hundred steps? On the surface, the Young Crops Law is designed to solve the problem of underrepresented farmers, and the government will provide relief, but this relief method has a premise-paid.To put it bluntly, the former is a means, while the latter is the purpose, that is, the government lends money to collect interest, which predestined the value orientation of the Green Crop Law to be naked economic interests, that is, to achieve what Wang Anshi said, "Generate the wealth of the world with the power of the world, and obtain The purpose of using the wealth of the world for the expenses of the world".

As a county magistrate, if there is no green crop law, then he might burn incense and wish that the whole county will have good weather, farmers will have food to eat, and his performance will be famous and rich. However, after the implementation of the Green Crops Law, once the county magistrate’s dream comes true, that is, the farmers in this county will have enough to eat and no one will borrow from the government. Then at the end of the year, the county mayor’s green crop loan performance may be zero, and may be punished. Put on the charge of "obstructing the new law", so that the black hat will not be guaranteed.

Just as all coffin shop owners love dead people, all florist shop owners love Valentine's Day, and all umbrella shop owners love rain, the bureaucrats who are executors of young crop loans must hope that many people need their loan. Fundamentally speaking, this is contrary to their basic duties as parents. Because it is not every day that someone needs a loan for young crops, grassroots officials who cannot complete their tasks may use one thing almost subconsciously-power. This is exactly what the old party like Sima Guang Su Shi is most worried about. In their view, the government with power lends usurious loans like a super monster driving a tank to ask for protection fees from various businesses, far more than the people holding fruit knives. Punks are far more dangerous, although they may demand less money.

Sima Guang's words have another meaning: borrowing money, of course, involves repaying the money. Anyone who has borrowed money knows a truth, the person who borrows money is the uncle when he borrows money, and the grandson when he asks for money. In the eyes of the person who owes money, when he takes the money from the borrower, what he sees in his eyes is grace; when he is asked to pay back the money, what he sees in his eyes is hatred. If the repayment is a bit more than what was borrowed, the hatred will increase accordingly. A smart daughter-in-law once said to her husband that we can never lend money to our parents-in-law. There are only two choices: be filial if you have money, and don’t give if you have money. Don’t mention borrowing words.

Because if you mention borrowed characters, it will not only hurt your face, but also hurt your feelings. When Sima and Wang, who were good friends during the Jiayou period, were working in the library, their common boss was Bao Zheng and Bao Longtu.Once, Lao Bao invited these two talented young men under his command to have a meal. There was no feast without wine. The three had a drink to one's heart's content. The boss was very enthusiastic, but Sima Junshi couldn't help it in the end. After drinking two glasses, Wang Jiefu showed his stubbornness again and refused to lift the glass. This made Mr. Bao, who was admired by everyone at that time, unable to step down from the stage, and became Wang Anshi's classmate. A classic example of unreasonable sophistication.

And Sima Guang who drank the wine knew that what he drank was not only the wine, but also the enthusiasm of Mr. Bao, and it was Mr. Bao's face. So he would rather hurt his body than his feelings, let alone hurt his face. In the Chinese feudal empire for more than 2,000 years, the rulers have been promoting a concept to their people: monarch and minister, father and son. An empire is a harmonious feudal family, where the monarch entrusts his subjects (people) with trust, and the subjects (people) repay the monarch with loyalty, all in harmony. And when borrowing words is mentioned between the monarch and the people, it is also not so harmonious, because when it is not used, it will hurt face and hurt feelings. In Wang Anshi's green crop method, farmers come to borrow money (grain) when they are in short supply, and they can bear the high interest rates on weekdays. The government's interest is really nothing.When it comes to the autumn harvest, when there is a good year, there are still three or five buckets left after paying off the principal and interest. If you are a prodigal son, it's over, and you have nothing to return, except for a dilapidated house and a poor old cow. At this time, it is a problem for the government to ask for money, and if you want it, you have to tear your face to ask for it.Private borrowers don't care, there are houses for sale, cows and cows for land, and wives for wives. The loan sharks don't have to worry about the future, and the relationship between debt collection and settlement is irrelevant to me. But the government is faced with a dilemma: to or not to? Yes, the peasant household went bankrupt and became a refugee, and the country has added a burden and an unstable factor; no, there is an extra dead debt on the government's books. Even in a good year, there will be many people who default on their debts, and the young crop law becomes a relief—does the government have so much money to distribute relief? As a borrower, the empire itself has far higher risks than ordinary private lenders.This risk is based on his dual relationship with the borrowers: he is not only a creditor, but also their patron and guardian. As a borrower, one of the most important issues to consider is risk aversion, and the empire's young crop law cannot be exempted.In fact, as soon as the law was promulgated, the old party pointed out sharply that since you, Wang Anshi, said that the original intention of introducing the Young Crops Law was to "suppress mergers", why should you assign credit ratings to loan users? The farmers who need money the most are the poorest The fifth class can only borrow one penny at a time; while the wealthy households who are the richest and least need to borrow money are listed in the first class, but they can borrow fifteen pennies at a time. Wang Anshi could not fight back this accusation, because he could not conceal the ultimate goal of the Young Crop Law—to make money. Now that the central government has taken this risk aversion issue into consideration, officials who care about their own future and their black hats will pay more attention to this issue.Lending money to a first-class wealthy household is equivalent to lending money to fifteen fifth-class poor households. The same process results in different results, so are you willing to do it fifteen times or once—of course the latter.What's more, the first-class wealthy households with thousands of mu of fertile land will never be able to pay back the money; while those poor people who are waiting for the rice to cook, it seems that they may go bankrupt at any time. So a very strange phenomenon appeared-on the one hand, the bureaucrats tried to force the rich and big households who did not need money to "loan"; Even if they borrowed it, that little amount of money was not enough for them to tide over the difficulties. In the end, they had to turn around and lend a helping hand to loan sharks.But at this time, they saw that the interest rate of usury had risen from seven cents to ten cents now. Why?Because of course the wealthy households have to accumulate the three-percentage interest that the government forcibly loaned to them. Sima Guang is that clever "little daughter-in-law", who has seen too many disharmonious factors in the word "borrow" in the Qingmiao Law.He is even more distressed by the destruction of the original merger suppression mechanism by the Green Crops Law. The capital used by the Green Crops Law is the grain in the original Changping warehouse and Huimin warehouse.In the past, the government set up Changping warehouses and Huimin warehouses to buy grain from farmers at a fair price when the harvest was cheap, and sell grain to farmers at a similar price when there was a shortage of grain. Speculation played a very important role, and was considered by Sima Guang as "the legacy of three generations of sage kings". But now, the paid Green Crop Law has replaced the free Changping warehouse and Huimin warehouse. The people of the empire looked up at their king, and what was written on their faces was no longer the letter, but the word "benefit". Who told the emperor of the Zhao family to be tight? "The harm of loose young crops is small, but the harm of destroying Changping is great." It should be said that for the entire empire, the benefits gained from implementing the Young Crops Law are small, but the damage to the social chain and moral chain of the empire is great. Thousands of years later, someone sighed for Wang Anshi, saying that when the Green Crop Law was implemented, if the empire had set up a completely independent institution to replace the government in lending young crops, then perhaps this reform would not have brought so many ills and negative effects . What they are talking about is the National Bank, which was the product of Wang Anshi's failed political reform more than a thousand years ago. In addition, the empire has no cure for the harm of young crops.