Chapter 831: The Meat Ration Quota

Baifeng was not forcing Mu; this could be considered a timely rap on the knuckles. A superior cannot always be benevolent and kind; occasionally wielding the rod is the correct approach.

"Good, since you can provide a guarantee, that is for the best. After you return, revise your plan. As for whether it is half a year or one hundred days, you must decide that yourself. After all, you are in charge of the pastures; you know better than anyone how much meat the various pastures can produce and the room for future development."

Mu immediately nodded firmly: "Understood, King. I will go and revise it immediately after the meeting ends."

Baifeng beckoned, letting the people from the Secretariat, which is to say the Secretariat Department, distribute a printed copy of this plan to everyone for them to read themselves.

"Alright, since you all care so much about your own interests, then take a look first. See if you have any opinions on this. If there are any issues, bring them up now. After today, this matter should be put on the agenda and pushed forward as soon as possible. I hope that next year, our Huaxia can have a new look and new changes."

After the officials received the document, they immediately opened it and scanned it word for word. The document was made very well, with various charts and pie graphs. How many supported it, how many opposed it, how many people were surveyed, and the social strata of the surveyed personnel were all clearly visible. As long as they had graduated from a school in Huaxia, they could understand it completely.

They only scanned the general data. Since Baifeng said there was no problem, then there was certainly no problem. What they cared about most was the distribution ratio of various materials. Seeing the page on distribution ratios, it had delineated the meat ration that one person in each stratum should receive, based on the meat output from the Ministry of Agriculture combined with the calculations of the Ministry of Revenue.

But they first had to find which stratum they were in. Although they were all officials, they also received fixed salaries. Some people had more land at home, while others had less. Even if they were of the same rank, the gap in annual income could be very large. Moreover, this was calculated based on the average annual income per person, which meant that even if a family had a lot of land and grain, if they also had many people, their family's stratum might not necessarily be high.

This algorithm left everyone somewhat confused. After all, a large family population should be a symbol of wealth, but as the saying goes, if Baifeng said there was no problem, then there was no problem.

Those who held Nobility did not care much, because this Nobility represented how much meat and how many other materials they could be allocated every day, or rather every thirty days. This was even free of charge; they did not need to pay any costs.

The higher the Nobility, the more they could receive. Those few Marquises ate basically the same as Baifeng; they could be said to not lack meat. But if the family population was too large, apart from the direct line, the collateral branches did not have that much meat to divide. Although they also bore the status of being from the family of such-and-such Marquis, and those lucky enough could even obtain a surname, their lives were not necessarily better than the direct descendants of ordinary officials; it was just that their status and position were higher.

According to the Order of Extending Favor that Baifeng had already implemented, most people in the end were just ordinary people with a surname. This point had already begun to manifest in the case of Wu.

Shaohe inherited the Nobility of his father, the Changping Marquis, but his younger brothers only obtained the Nobility of a Count. Except for the Changping Marquis, who was a Founding Marquis, every generation that passed would be reduced by one rank. That is to say, the great-grandchildren of Wu would basically have no Nobility, leaving only Shaohe's branch as Nobles; the number was strictly controlled.

Baifeng's Order of Extending Favor was not a complete copy of the 【historical】 Order of Extending Favor, but had been modified. However, for Huaxia, this was already enough. As long as one's honor could be passed down, that was fine, but wealth was also divided. Huaxia did not force division, but if younger brothers and sisters wanted to divide it, the Legitimate Son could not refuse.

A point where Huaxia was more advanced was that it did not deny women the ability to inherit Nobility. Huaxia even already had one female Noble, Zhinu. Her name was Zhinu, and her job was also a weaver. She was one of the women Huaxia bought back in the earliest days. Through improving Huaxia's weaving machines and developing the weaving industry, her contribution to Huaxia was still very great.

Thus, during the collective ennoblement, she was granted the title of Wen Count and bestowed the surname Fang—Fang, same as the 'fang' in weaving, the sound is the same. However, Zhinu's status could probably only reach this high, because she was now nearing retirement. Although she was in good health, her eyes were not very good, and her age was not too young.

But she was not diligent in her studies and could only recognize some simple characters. Her ability was also limited to the entire Weaving Department. It would be difficult for her to be competent in any larger undertaking, so Wen Count was her limit.

Ennobling a woman had a great impact in Huaxia. After all, this was a patriarchal society, and even patriarchalism was extremely strong. Ennobling a woman naturally met with great disagreement, but fortunately, Baifeng's power was great enough and his deterrence toward them was sufficient, so no one dared to oppose it.

However, everyone had long expected the ennoblement of women. After all, women could also go to school, take exams, and even serve as soldiers; they were treated completely as men. Ennobling them was only a matter of time. The elderly and those with old-fashioned ideas found it somewhat hard to accept, but the young were quite understanding.

The benefits of the Baifeng version of the Order of Extending Favor were displayed at such times. The number of Nobles that Huaxia needed to support for free would not increase indefinitely; it was basically kept stable. But for the sake of their families' large populations, Baifeng also gave them the power to purchase meat and other materials.

Still calculated according to the strata, they all belonged to the high-income group. Most officials saw that they were actually only in the middle-income group, which was quite different from what they had imagined. If they knew about those Landlords who became high-income earners just by farming, they would not know what their thoughts would be.

Comparing their own class and then looking at their meat quota—very good, they were very satisfied. Some officials even felt that they could get more than before, so they were naturally satisfied and very happy.

However, most of the people from the Ministry of Revenue could not laugh. Without the convenience of being a salesperson, they also had to take so-called tickets to exchange for meat. What was the use of that? Perhaps at most, it was just letting a colleague save them a better cut of meat, but the quantity was unknown how much less. Because they often bought meat, they could not even count how many catties of meat they ate in a year themselves.

After waiting for some time, Baifeng tapped the table with his finger: "How is it, everyone? Are there any opinions, or any viewpoints you want to express? If there are, speak now."