Wang Anshi and Sima Guang had different views on the problems encountered in the early days of the Northern Song Dynasty, but why did Emperor Shenzong agree with Wang Anshi's proposal to change the law? Let's start with a debate.
The incident originated from a major flood in the Heshuo area, Zeng Gongliang proposed, at present, the finances are tight, when the disaster relief is the mainstay, the suburban ceremony rewards for the slaughtering personnel are saved!
This will came to the Hanlin Academy, and I asked all the scholars to write it. thereupon......
Sima Bachelor: Frugality starts from me, support!
Wang Anshi: A cup of water, image engineering. I wanted to save lunch when the Tang Dynasty Prime Minister Chang Gong saved lunch, and was ridiculed, and it was better to resign than to resign. Insufficient national use is the appearance, and the real problem is not here.
Sima Xueshi: Reducing Feng Lu is better than the waste of corpse vegetarian meals, and the most important problem now is the shortage of materials, Wang Anshi is not right.
Wang Anshi shows an unfathomable side: Do you know why the country is underused? The core problem is not finding out who can really manage money.
This sentence was first proposed in the Song Dynasty, and even if someone had done it before, no such theory had been formed.
Shenzong's eyes lit up, but Sima Xueshi was a master of history, and he immediately disagreed: The people you are talking about who can manage money are not scavenging wealth according to their hukou and heads! If the people are poor, they will steal, and it is not good or bad.
Wang Anshi's words moved Shenzong endlessly: I can increase the state's income without raising the tax rate.
Sima Guang thought to himself, if you dare to say such a thing when I am here, it is simply an insult to my intelligence and to ignore my knowledge.
He said tightly: The number of goods in the world is limited, and it is not in the officials but in the people. What you said about being able to sufficiency the treasury without adding endowments is to secretly rob the people of their wealth, which is even worse than adding endowments, and there are at least clear figures for additional endowments. Such a trick has been used by someone before, Sang Hongyang used this trick to fool Emperor Wu of Han, the consequences are very serious, when who does not know?
The conversation culminates here, but the record after that is gone, and it ends.
To sum up with economic theory, Sima Guang's theory is "zero sum", that is, income and expenditure are equal, and not in the government, but in the people;
Wang Anshi's theory is called "value-added", using various means and methods to stimulate the market, speed up the speed of turnover, and generate higher tax values at the same interest rate. In a word, as long as the small trader sells the goods quickly and the price does not change, he still makes a lot of money.
Wang Anshi's ideas were beyond the limits of the times, so why did Song Shenzong still listen to him? Dharma practitioners pay attention to practical results, so they can create the world. Confucianism teaches people to observe etiquette and let those with vested interests like it. Song Shenzong is a typical "outer Confucian and internal method", and he found resonance in Wang Anshi's body.
The main reference to the article is the work "If This Is the History of Song"