Li Xian blinked, feeling aggrieved, "I really only have time now. I really have a lot of things to do after the New Year."
I added in my mind that maybe we should get married.
Without waiting for the prime minister to speak again, Wang Chuan spoke first; Shangshu Wang smiled happily, "My dear nephew, you did the right thing. This is how things should be done. There is nothing that cannot be said to others. If the prime minister has anything to say, you can say it now, and Your Majesty can also comment on it."
Needless to say, Wang Chuan's words made Prime Minister Ouyang Wubing look even uglier. Finally, he looked at Li Xian angrily, "Li Xian, since you want to say it here, then I have a few questions for you. First, the textile machine is very expensive! I later carefully calculated the account. If the textile machine is not included, the price of woven cloth can indeed be reduced to 70%, but if the textile machine is included, the price does not seem to be much cheaper! How do you answer this?"
It has to be said that the prime minister is the prime minister. He hit the nail on the head with just one sentence. Both the officials and the emperor looked at Li Xian.
Li Xian knew that he seemed to have really annoyed this "upright, honest and dedicated" prime minister by asking such a question at the beginning. He immediately sat up straight and looked serious.
"Mr. Prime Minister, may I ask how you calculated before asking this question? To be precise, how did you calculate this result?"
"That's easy. I've seen the price of your loom. It costs 500 taels of gold, which is 5,000 taels of silver. Take a piece of low-quality silk as an example. The market price is about one tael of silver. A skilled weaver can weave one piece of cloth a day, and about 200 pieces a year (it's impossible to work all year round). Including related expenses, the annual profit is about 20 taels of silver. The loom can weave 10 pieces of cloth a day, and it can't work all year round. Even if it works 300 days a year, that's 3,000 pieces of cloth, and the profit will not exceed 300 taels of silver. Because of the strategy of small profits but quick turnover, a profit of 200 taels of silver is very good. In this way, it will take 25 years just to earn back the cost of 5,000 taels of silver. Including other expenses, it will not be profitable within 30 years. And this loom is probably not used for five years."
Li Xian was dumbfounded. "Prime Minister, is this how you settle accounts? Damn, is this the level of a prime minister? I'm so scared!"
Not to mention Li Xian was dumbfounded, even some officials who knew the details were dumbfounded. The next moment, Wang Ping was the first to laugh, and he laughed so hard that the wine splashed everywhere, "Prime Minister, you... Haha, the textile machines sold at the Expo are not textile machines, but opportunities. The textile machines are very easy to imitate. To be honest, our Wang family also bought a textile machine and disassembled it for research. If you only carve the formation to make a textile machine, the cost price of a textile machine is no more than 4 taels of gold. It's just that such a textile machine will be very heavy. Moreover, the textile machines sold by Li Xian are all models, not real textile machines. With a little modification, it can weave about 15 pieces of cloth a day; after all, the textile machine is not a person, it can run all year round without stopping, as long as the staff are arranged on duty. It only takes half a year to earn back the cost of the textile machine. The cost price of large-scale textile production has been reduced to a level that you, a prime minister, would never dare to imagine."
Ouyang Wubing was dumbfounded for a moment. After all this time, he realized that he had made a mistake - it turned out that it was not the textile machine that was worth five hundred taels of gold, but the "opportunity" that was worth five hundred taels of gold.