How can I evaluate the relative fiscal burden on different groups in the US, for various periods between 1790 and 1846?

This is a marxist answer. All answers will be theoretically seated to a question like this, which asks complex questions about theoretically situated categories (purporting to represent real lived experience). Moreover this question has a moral element which requires a theoretical positioning to respond to. The theoretical positioning of marxism is that all morality is superstructural: ie, not final instance determinant, and therefore not worth building theoretical categories on. Marxism's answer to what a burthen is in capitalism is to talk in marxian value terms: i.e., dollars as a proportion of expendible dollars.

To compare worth over time requires a theoretical response. Some theoretical responses are "Price of Labour in Time priced as Beer relativities" ie: a commodity consumption bundle which is deemed morally normal ("normative"): such as "bread, beer, books" (note absence of rent) and then the commodity bundle is either transferred directly, or morally transformed by later researchers to "bread, beer, books, PS1 games downloaded on steam." This produces a time price series which I, and others, believe represent "what does labour cost to capital?" I believe this because consumption commodity bundles were used to reference set the Australian price series used to determine wages for 70 years, and the only revisions to the series were to reduce the amount of things workers got to enjoy.

Another time series is the %GDP/capita. This is the proportion of Gross Domestic Product (ie: proportion of things and services) per person. So in 1800 if we made $10 across the United States and there were 10 people and a cat cost $1 a cat would be 100% of GDP/capita or the total output of one persons' worth of product per year. If in 2000 we made $200 across the United States and there were 20 people and a cat cost $1 a cat would be 10% of GDP/capita or the total output of 1/10th of one persons' worth of product per year. %GDP/capita emphasises the increasing rate of capitalisation (ie: means of production) and the role of profit. %GDP/capita emphasises the commonality of all people, not their ownership of means of production.

You could use both of these measures to make a time series comparison of the relative costs compared to other economic make-ups of the United States. Because as all burthens are normative, ie moral, the only way to evaluate them is time comparatively, or look at people shooting other people over relative burdens.

To breakdown class there are a number of ways. I'd suggest drawing out all non-slave wage income earners as "proletarians (free)" due to their similar consumption bundle. Slave wage income earners ("unfree labour" as contemporary research puts it) are more difficult to impute. You'd need to split the burden across small holding masters and great holding (plantation / latifunda) masters. And impute based on the impact on the master's capital position. And that assumes that there would be an impact. Probably the best metric would be increase in internal sale rates after tarrif changes: ie: unaffordable wage costs result in liquidation of the unfree labourer.

For owners of things ("bourgeoisie") a number of sectoral breaks should be made. Haute/gross bourgeois and pet**s/kleine bourgeois should be seperated. Basically the criteria here is "modern scale of production," rather than "owner/operator" as in classic pet**s-bourgeois. Small holders and family farms are identical in relation to tarrifs due to their lack of capacity to influence politics or to change production. They're productively locked. Bankruptcy rates would be a good indicator.

Haute/gross bourgeois should be sectorally divided. Locked production such as cotton latifunda need to be viewed separately to New York finance capital or Boston shipping capital. This is because the markets they engage in will relate differently to tarrifs. In some instances (latifunda slavery) the capital is locked and non-transferrable which leads to more political and less market responses. New York finance capital can just ditch ancilliary investment in cotton and switch to corn or steer or tobacco.

So sectoral division of large capital to mirror market specific tarrifs, bankruptcy proxy on small capital, draw out two groups of proletarians based on their freedom of movement. Use two proxies to represent capital's interest over time (cheap labour) to labour's interest over time (how much of all of it do we get). Compare to modern capitalisation structures.

• Measuringworth.com