We live in a country where the most visible support for raising taxes on the rich comes from … the rich. So much for the seeming dictates of economic rationality and the logic of class war.

The Wealth for the Common Good Web site features pictures of some of our most economically successful citizens calling for higher taxes on themselves.

Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, published an commentary in this paper calling for an increase in the top federal marginal tax rate to 50 percent on all income over $1 million a year. He insisted it would not reduce his incentive to work.

At the opposite end of the income spectrum, passionate opposition to the estate tax is expressed by men and women who face no risk of ever paying it. The progressive group Citizens for Tax Justice observes that the percentage of households with income under $30,000 complaining that federal income taxes are too high exceeds the percentage even paying federal income taxes.

Such patterns could be explained by false consciousness (a misperception of one’s economic interests) or moral conscience (the fortitude to rise above such interests). Maybe the media just like man-bites-dog stories; maybe powerful political interests distort media coverage. None of these possible explanations is mutually exclusive.

The tax system in this country is pretty complicated, and nobody knows how well people understand their place in it. David Brooks once claimed that 19 percent of Americans thought they were in the top 1 percent of the income distribution in 2000.

A more accurate interpretation of the polling data he was referring to suggests that 19 percent thought they would benefit from tax cuts to the top 1 percent. This is almost equally implausible.