"Before starting this council, I would like to thank all the officials for attending this council.
Our Ministry of Revenue’s annual council happens in the middle of the year, so this urgent council must’ve led to many disruptions in your plans.
I apologize for this matter!" the Grand Minister of Revenue, Fa Shanyuan, cupped his hands to all officials.
"We are honoured to attend the Ministry of Revenue’s council!" the ministers led the officials to also cup their hands, not rejecting the apology as it was truly a disruption of plans, at least leading to a delay of a week for each of them.
"Then, we shall start the council! Minister Duan, why don’t you tell us the matters we will discuss today?" Shanyuan sat down on his grand seat, looking at the General Minister of Revenue, Duan Qiwang.
"I shall follow the minister’s words!" Minister Duan nodded and turned to look at the thirteen people beside him, who all looked at him with some curiosity, thinking to themselves that they didn’t know there was more than one matter!
"The first order of today is to discuss every ministry’s contributions to solving the plague in Qingling province! The second order is to discuss the Ministry of Revenue’s plans for the upcoming year, and the third order is to discuss the redistribution of our yearly revenue.
If there is no objection, I will start with the first order right away!"
No one objected, so Minister Duan told them the latest news of the plague, "After several inspections and verifications by the hands of Inspectors, Doctors and other professionals of the third rank, we have come to the conclusion that this plague is artificial!
It is a kind of poison that makes insects susceptible to getting illnesses, and there were likely other influences that led to the intentional fast spread of the plague.
By now, the plague’s range has spread across a whole province, though we don’t know the specific extent.
It is only because the Qingling Province has a total of seven prefectures that we were able to use other prefectures as buffer zones to ensure the plague wouldn’t spread further.
Now, all the other ministries already know about it, and the Ministry of Health has already issued a decree to the Court Physicians and Physicians of various places to gather and find a solution to this issue.
This plague was a malicious attack from outside, but we will have to first focus on recovering from it before we can think about countermeasures.
The question now is how many taels of gold we can pay per 100.000 people..."
Instantly, the crowd broke out in shock, the shock at the fact that this was an attack!
The twelve ministers were calm, meaning they had been informed... but everyone behind them, even the assistant ministers, were clueless!
Such a major event will require all provinces to empty their pockets, so as quickly as the shock descended, the officials just as quickly thought of how high the budget would have to be, and whether they even had enough gold saved up!
Tax was paid every three months, with different groups paying at different times. Farmers paid in autumn, merchants in winter, officials in spring and the rest in summer.
Among all taxes, the merchant tax was the lowest. So each of them hadn’t gained much from the last tax. In addition, they could only use at most half their taxes each time, to ensure they had enough funds to finance any issue between the tax collections.
As everyone gradually woke up from their shock, they discussed how many gold taels they’d have to pay.
The initial numbers were all above 10.000 gold, but the number kept rising as each of them counted issues – compared to paying people to work, paying doctors to treat them, paying them to relocate, paying counties to hold refugees... each of these steps required an immense budget.
Yunyin, looking at this, was equally shocked, but his numbers were even more astonishing than what other people’s guesses.
’To ensure a full recovery in as fast a time span as possible, just to handle the population, we’d need at least 1 gold tael per citizen! The key is that this should allow them to get right back to work after they recover, and at worst they can use it to hire some farm hands!’
Compared to farmers and others, farm hands were vagrants without a household registry, often working during planting and harvest season.
With a gold tael in hand, which is equivalent to one hundred silver taels, each farmer should be able to get their farm back on track right away.
The harvest in the north was poor this year, so the south can’t have a bad year!
Just based on silver and gold, they would indeed lose out on gold. But if there is no grain, then the price of grain will spike rapidly. It would become a snowball rolling through the whole dynasty, causing countless issues.
Rather than save money here, it’s better to use more to solve the issue once and for all. In at most three years, all expenditures will be recovered.
Anyways, all their saved up gold was exactly for this situation!
So, among those that spoke up, his voice sounded rather cold yet it shocked those around him instantly, "One gold tael per citizen, not any less."
Shocked, those around him became quiet, leading to people paying more attention to this place.
"What did he say?" an official asked.
"One gold tael per citizen!"
"What! How is that possible?"
"No way, that’s way too much!"
One voice after another spoke up, refuting his claim of needing such a huge budget.
But among them, a loud voice asked Yunyin, "One gold tael per person, why is that?"
Yunyin stood up and cupped his hands to the origin of the voice, "There are countless costs and even more hidden costs that will gradually drain the budget. If we go low, we will definitely have too little.
Assign the budget first, then send officials from nearby provinces to oversee each place where the budget is used, and only allow reasonable expenditures while marking down heinous practices for future blacklisting."
"Reasonable," the voice agreed with him...!