What if we gave a modern tax collector central control of a feudal economy
Sounds like a disaster in the making? It's also a far more accurate title for this manga.
The goal of this review is to give an overview of the story and especially the economics of the story up until chapter 23 which is where I dropped this.
We follow the footsteps of a reincarnated tax collector lady from 21st century that worked for the Japanese government who is now in the body of a petty villainess duke's daughter from an Otome game. Since she got on board when the original owner did her last
...
act of villainy, she's set to be punished for harassing the main love interest at their academy. Since it's a fairly minor thing she did her dad just sends her off to manage a fiefdom he owns as a light punishment. So that's where the story takes place, from this point forward I'll refrain from talking about the characters, which are just generic but decent, the art is also ok, I'll also do my best to also keep politics out of this.
The setting of the world is quite unrealistic, I understand an Otome game wouldn't be very much fleshed out but the mangaka is playing it extremely straight so there's no excuse, for example in the fiefdom they're casually growing cacao in the farms but they don't know what's or how to make chocolate, they also haven't made the revolutionary discovery of banking, which has been with us in the real world for millennia now. So in this very advanced civilization with fully fledged nobility and academies for said nobility they still haven't invented chocolate and banking. That's hard to swallow. I usually let it slide in Isekai types but this is just too much, although only for the banking innovation because this revolves so much about economy.
Anyway MC sees her chance and not only introduces banking to her unsuspecting fiefdom, she goes from 0-100 by introducing commodity backed credit backed by the lord of the land(her dad), so yea, how do you think it would go if you go to the Roman empire who's giving salt to it's legionnaires and suddenly you start talking about commodity backed paper money, I believe you would be lucky to get laughed out of the room. But MC pulls it off of course. I don't remember if she establishes any lending practices though.
Moving on, we get to a point where MC is keeping tabs on the local economy and she sees some medieval times price fluctuations which she immediately confuses with inflation, and the little diagram they show in page 4 of chapter 19 is wrong on so many levels, however I'm not a heartless person I'm willing to cut some slack to a Japanese author, perhaps mal-informed, following mainstream japanese economic dogma, at least to the time of writing this review, so I'll explain, she says bluntly that inflation are price increases which means that the people are getting richer and proceeds to dismiss the phenomenon as a virtuous cycle, not only is she wrong on what's going on but she's wrong on what she said as well, inflation is not a virtuous cycle, in medieval societies is usually a straight line that keeps going up very slowly and steady as you mine the commodity your economy is based on(usually gold and silver) it can also go up if her bank starts expanding credit(printing more cash than gold it has on it's vaults) but we have no indication this is what's going on. So this is not inflation, it's just medieval price fluctuations, a very common occurrence, as season and situations change some commodities become more valuable and scarce than other so their supply/demand graph look radically different from commodities that are abundant at the moment because the demand plummeted and are therefore less valuable. Imagine is like buying winter clothes in the middle of a hot summer compared to buying the same clothes in the middle of a cold winter, you'd expect the price to reflect the clothes are more or less wanted, it is basically the same but more pronounced, but it ultimately balances out.
The straw that really broke the camel's back is chapter 22, a chapter all about taxation... Thrilling I know, in this chapter MC discloses her intention to get rid of the capitation and replace it with a sales tax. Which is a pretty good idea, the main drawback is that is harder to enforce. What's really bad is on top of the sales tax she also wants to impose an income tax on net income for all working adults... Now imposing this on a feudal society is a terrible idea for many reasons, the main one is that you're levying too much abuse on your poor peasants so they would probably just leave, income tax are typically imposed on war time, the enforcement would be a huge nightmare, these peasants are already paying the levy tax(they must respond to a call for war as soldiers) and lease of the land in all likelyhood so it's just cruel, they will cheat, you're milking something that's not there, It'll destroy productivity, increase spending and lowers savings. I believe she mentions is a progressive income tax instead of flat but it's still a terrible idea, and of course since it's net income you're free to do deductions, luckily a support character beats some sense into her by saying that the peasants aren't ready since they're not educated but still has the gall to agree it's a good idea and it'll be great if the peasants would do this voluntarily and without assistance someday lol.
Imagine you're a peasant in this fiefdom, by now you not only have a conscription obligation, you're also paying a lease to plow the land and paying a tax for every item you buy, and now you have to manually keep a ledger all the taxable year to record your income and expenses just so you can "voluntarily" give a portion of it to the rich lady that lives in the big mansion, if that was me I would be packing my bags.
It's obvious to me that the author likes the Japanese economy and wanted to model this new world after it, but some things just don't work if you don't do them properly. For full disclosure I don't have much issues with the Japanese economy either I can just see the flaws of trying to introduce modern tax and economic policies to the world of the past.
A positive of this is that she actually created an academy to drive innovation, that's a good move, even if it's just the author mimicking their own society yet again.
If I had to predict what would happen in this manga it'll be that she will eventually add a VAT for alcohol and whatnot, there's also no point in having a estate and gift tax so we can forget about that, she will introduce welfare and safety nets, perhaps state funded orphanages and she will eventually try to stimulate economic growth and prosperity by increasing overall spending.
Like I said I'm not upset at the author or anything like that but I find this manga extremely hard to read. I might come back in the future once this is finished to see how the non-economic plotlines pan out but in the meantime this is a hard pass for me.
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Sep 3, 2022
Koushaku Reijou no Tashinami
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What if we gave a modern tax collector central control of a feudal economy
Sounds like a disaster in the making? It's also a far more accurate title for this manga. The goal of this review is to give an overview of the story and especially the economics of the story up until chapter 23 which is where I dropped this. We follow the footsteps of a reincarnated tax collector lady from 21st century that worked for the Japanese government who is now in the body of a petty villainess duke's daughter from an Otome game. Since she got on board when the original owner did her last ... |
