Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs exec who now directs the National Economic Council for Donald Trump, has a take-no-prisoners image that matches the silver skulls on his black-beaded bracelet. These days Cohn is bullying his way through tax “reform,” pushing for a repeal of the estate tax, the only federal levy on grand concentrations of private wealth. In one recent Capitol Hill meeting, the New York Times reports, Cohn argued that the nation can easily live without the estate tax because even minimally competent wealthy taxpayers can avoid it. Snickered Cohn: “Only morons pay the estate tax.” But wealthy Americans who pay the estate tax, explains tax attorney Bob Lord in a new Inequality.org analysis, have plenty of good reasons. “Moronic” may much better describe the rich who move heaven and earth to avoid paying even the tiniest of tax bills.

On Inequality.org this week, we cover everything from the upcoming tax fight in Congress to the perils of growing monopoly in the beer industry. How’s that for a great happy-hour read?

The past week’s biggest story, of course, has been the horrific hurricane on the Gulf Coast. Phil Mattera takes to Inequality.org to ask if taxpayer dollars should now be used to bail out the flooded-out petrochemical industry. Ben Leet wraps up our new Inequality.org offerings exploring the enormous gap between America’s top and bottom 1 percents.

Elsewhere on the web, Allan Lichtenstein reminds us this Labor Day that unions will determine the progressive future of the United States. America’s workers, meanwhile, are getting squeezed tighter every year, a function of concentrating grand fortune at the top, as laid out in a new release from researchers at How Much.

Can the U.S. Constitution co-exist with extreme inequality? Can our democracy? Zephyr Teachout reviews a new book that takes up questions like these, and a team of political scientists ponders, in the Social Science Resource Network, how inequality could leave our democracy disabled.  

One less obvious extreme inequality externality: how our economic divides impact the way we perceive each other. We may wear our incomes, new research suggests, on our faces.

Living at the top end of our divides does come with a few handy perks, like the ability to shut down people who challenge what you believe. Google chief Eric Schmidt has just exercised a bit of this power by having think tank staff fired after an online post critical of Google’s monopolistic behavior. Matt Stoller, one of the staffers fired, shares his take.

Want to get rich like Google’s Schmidt? Nick Confessore has a feature-length piece on just how to do that in Donald Trump’s America. Trump himself seems more focused these days on helping the already rich become even richer. Veteran activist Bob Borosage pierces through Trump’s “populist” outpourings on taxes, and Alexandra Thornton examines the tax cuts for the wealthy hidden in the drive for tax “reform.”