"It's really unbelievable that there are unemployed people in countries like ours." Meng Hu, a commissioner of the Ministry of Agriculture who had just returned from the Huxi area in Mei's office, said in surprise: "Aren't we planned economy? Why are there unemployed people? This is unscientific!"

"The planned economy also has unplanned people." Wei Boqiu, chief of the Mei agency, was carving a precious piece of red sandalwood with a knife intently. At this time, the work was almost completed. It seemed like a suffering priest. The priest was wearing a noose around his neck, and his expression was frightened and desperate, lifelike, which made Meng Hu feel creepy.

"For example, those who were arranged to join the construction team after they came to the local area, after the project was completed, they should have been arranged to go to a new settlement in the west. However, the conditions for the new settlement are temporarily limited, and there are not many people at the moment, so they can only wait in line. During this period, except for occasionally participating in the construction of municipal projects in some places to earn pocket money, they can only do odd jobs."

"The other is some illegal entry, such as those Central and Southern Europeans, who are hired by private bosses when they hold temporary identity certificates, and when they obtain formal identity, they still stay in their original factories or farms for various reasons. Sometimes when the business is not good, or when the boss feels that they don't need to hire so many people in the past, they are fired."

Wei Boqiu put down the carving knife in his hand, picked up the wet wipes handed to him by his secretary and wiped his hands, then continued: "The last situation is that the local formal residents send money to their relatives far away in the old continent, allowing them to take a boat to the east coast. After their relatives arrived at the east coast, due to their lack of skills, language barriers, and cultural inability to treat them, they were unable to find a long-term job in some large factories. They could only live as hawkers, odd jobs, or private bosses. Such people are generally Livornians."

"All the above three types of people are waiting for the construction of the next new settlement, hoping to be arranged there, divided into five acres of farmland and a house. If you are lucky, there may be female slaves to allocate them." Wei Boqiu picked up the dye to color the wood carvings, and said, "But they are not lucky. With more and more immigrants from the Ming Dynasty, the Executive Committee is now more willing to directly allocate new Shandong immigrants to the new settlements. As for the old people, although they also recruited a few to farm in the west to better help new immigrants get used to the system and culture of the East Coast, the number has been greatly reduced.

"Besides, the old city also requires them to engage in some jobs with less technical content. For example, in the shipbuilding industry zone in Zhenhai County, a large number of private supporting manufacturers need a large number of such workers. They do not need too much professional knowledge and skills, so their wages are destined to not be high. Moreover, the business of exporting ship rigs is very cyclical and volatility. In the past, when the Spanish and Ottomans had strong demand, they needed to export canvas, cables, skins, anchor chains, and wooden barrels every month. In those prosperous years, private bosses often recruit new workers on a large scale to expand production; but once the demand drops, they will lay off employees without hesitation to reduce production capacity. These have led to the unstable living conditions of this ordinary worker group. If it is enlarged to counting in years, their average monthly income is actually less than 4 yuan."

"So what are you going to do? What other measures are there besides the so-called "Social Security Relief Law"?" Meng Hu listened to Wei Boqiu introducing some domestic situations as if he was listening to stories. He himself was not very interested in government affairs. His interest lies in tourism and adventure, which was related to his personality. He often wrote some of his adventure activities into a diary and published it in a "National Geography" he founded himself, which had just been converted from a pheasant magazine.

Of course, since he is a member of the time traveler, he cannot do things with his own nature. He often accepts employment from the military headquarters and leads some expedition teams to explore various areas inside and outside the East Coast Republic and draw maps. Sometimes he will also accept the assignment of the Government Department or the intelligence department to conduct some social or economic investigations to give the people in power a clearer understanding of the domestic economic or social situation so as to better formulate policies.

This time, he accepted the employment of the State Council and led a team to the Yazi Lake Basin to conduct statistics on the domestic forest resources. The Executive Committee is planning to issue a Forest Law to regulate the current chaotic forest logging industry in China and the blurred property rights boundaries of forest resources.

"The new Social Security Relief Law is bound to be issued. The core idea of ​​the law is actually two: implement price subsidies for low-income groups among workers (including urban workers and agricultural workers) in the consumption of daily necessities; high income tax is imposed on high-income groups (including skilled technicians, senior technicians, wealthy farmers, military officers, etc.), and the starting point is adjusted from 2 yuan to 5 yuan." Wei Boqiu did not raise his head and colored the wood carving, but he still said.

"But the rural problems also need to be solved. The imbalance of industry and agriculture should not continue. In the past, we lacked experience in governing the country and made some mistakes that were taken for granted. Now that we have realized it, we must correct it. At present, rural work is very unreasonable. Many grassroots village cadres protect and conceal the real property of the villagers in the village, and a considerable number of farmers who meet the conditions for property tax collection have evaded taxes. We discovered this problem in many places during the investigation, and it must be solved now. Also, female slaves distributed to farmers should not be free in the future."

"The farmers' lives are really good." Meng Hu agreed: "In my investigation in the eleven townships in the north and south of the Yazihu ​​area, I found that they were really rich. Especially in the Ping'an County area, where the early developments, every household had been renovated, each household had at least three livestock and a group of chickens and ducks. Many people built new barns to store excess grains from harvest. Each adult man consumed cured meat at an average of at least three times a week, beer and liquor at least three times a week. Many people bought new furniture and leather goods; some were brewing wine privately, or selling grain to some deep-growing workshops or enterprises, and the price was often higher than the unified purchase price of the government. In short, they neither needed to spend more than two-thirds of their income on necessities like the urban working class, and at the same time there were many channels for cash. The quality of life was indeed not comparable to workers."

"So this is why the Executive Committee is planning to introduce the "Cere Law". "Wei Boqiu finally completed the work he had. He looked at him carefully and then placed the work on the bookshelf next to him. After doing all this, he smiled at Meng Hu and said, "Your investigation report is rich in content and detailed information, which complements the economic investigation of our Mei agency. Now the Executive Committee makes decisions much simpler. The "Cere Law" must be implemented resolutely. Some private workshops or enterprises will no longer have the right to purchase grain from the private sector. All grain must be purchased and sold by the government, and the prices will be formulated twice a year according to the situation. They will be formulated and publicized before summer grain and autumn grain harvest. In the past, the collection of agricultural tax has been delayed and has not been carried out. Now it has to be strictly implemented."

"Haha, the knife is cut on the farmers." Meng Hu smiled slightly and said, "In the past, they said that the industry and agriculture were apart from scissors, and agriculture subsidies the industry. His grandmother, we are still in the forefront of the establishment, which is the industry subsidies the agriculture. No wonder those workers are dissatisfied. After all, they have created most of the country's wealth, but the distribution mechanism is unfair to them. Now these laws are intensively issued, and the target targets are already very obvious."

"The country has created a lot of loopholes in the system. Now there are some problems, so naturally it needs to be adjusted. There is nothing to be embarrassing. If you are wrong, it is wrong. Just correct it in time." Wei Boqiu said, "The situation you investigated about the large number of pilfered forest resources in Huxi area is also very valuable. Many villagers go to the forest to cut down those thick trees and then go back for various purposes. Some people are even reluctant to spend money to buy honeycomb coal and turn to cut down trees as fuel. The bad thing is that they often only know how to cut down trees, but do not replant new seedlings, which causes the forest area to continue to decrease. Although the population of our country is still small and the forest area is quite large, this trend is wrong and must be curbed."

What Wei Boqiu mentioned is actually common. In addition to the sparse forests in the south, in more than a dozen towns in the north, trees on large areas of commons (i.e. unallocated land) that are close to the villages has been cut down. There are even some exaggerated practices, that is, some villagers burn a small piece of wood as a whole, and then plant some crops on it. The harvest is often quite considerable, but this is at the cost of destroying precious forest resources.

In the past, the state did not have a clear legal statement about these behaviors, so it was quite troublesome to deal with them. Now the Executive Committee is planning to issue the Forest Law, which is to uniformly manage forest resources on the commons. Any private logging or burning of wasteland will be defined as illegal. Similarly, in the future, more laws such as the Mineral Resources Law and the Lakes and Rivers Management Law will definitely be issued one after another to further improve various domestic rules and regulations.

"By the way, why are the wood carvings and artworks you made in the same style? They are all priests, and they are suffering priests. Their expressions are so vivid, some even look like..." After chatting, Meng Hu looked at the row of wood carvings on Wei Boqiu's bookshelf, and suddenly frowned and said with a thoughtful sentence.

"It looks familiar, right?" Wei Boqiu smiled faintly and said, "These are all priests who have been interrogated and executed by me personally. They are all carved according to their true faces, and of course they are lifelike."

"I...I'll go back to process the report." Meng Hu suddenly felt a little cold in the room, so he immediately packed up his things and left Mei's office. (To be continued...)
Chapter completed!