The chart to the right demonstrates how in an ecosystem the energy trickles upward to the top predators. What is not shown are the trillions and trillions of tiny organisms upon which the plants also depend for nutrients.

It is time to lay to rest this destructive myth, this mantra of Reagonomics. Has not this misconception created enough misery? Wealth created from the top then trickling down to the serfs is a feudal and subservient belief. Wealth is seen as coming from above, from the lords of the land.

This belief is the basis of victimhood: “I have no power of my own. Power is given and taken away by another.” We sell out and we tolerate abuse in order to get power coming to us from another. We can thus be controlled. The basis of this control is our own misconception about the nature of power. Perhaps Divine Power comes from above, but earthly power does not.

My personal opinion is that ecology and economy are parallel sciences. Food and money are both forms of energy. In nature, wealth (food) is created at the very bottom with the single-cell organisms who assist in feeding the plants by creating nutrients in the soil that are eaten by slightly larger organisms who are in turn eaten by even larger organisms. This continues until the apex of the food chain in an ecosystem with the top predators who eat those below and are relatively free themselves from being eaten.

Or are they free from it? We are all eaten by something eventually. The top predator dies and the small creatures -- the bacteria and worms -- devour the carcass. These small creatures are in turn eaten by plants and larger creatures. The cycle of life continues. Energy is conserved.

So, you see, wealth in the food chain begins at the bottom and trickles UP. It does not ever, ever trickle down. When it does move down, it lands with a huge thud because something catastrophic happened to a top predator or a lesser organism.

The United States has not lost its wealth. The real wealth of this country is in the hearts and minds of its citizens. These citizens allowed themselves to become disempowered by the top predators of Wall Street who conned them into thinking that by making these cats fat, they would create jobs.

All we real wealth producers got out of this is a bunch of bloated top predators buying diamond-studded loos while our children’s schools have busted toilets because they can’t afford to fix them. The fat cats got fatter and fatter, while the rest of us lost -- and will continue to lose because of the inflation and higher taxes that will be caused by all the bailouts.

Don’t blame the fat cats for their greed. We were blind to it as a nation because we shared it. We were enablers. As a Ferengi character explained in a Star Trek, Deep Space 9 episode, “Ferengis don’t want to be free from exploitation. They want to become the exploiters.” Did you not dream of becoming rich and powerful?

Wealth is not created by a Wall Street fat cat any more than a mountain lion creates the food chain. The top predator does, however, have an obligation in nature for his privileged position. The top predator is the caretaker of his ecosystem. People who live in canyon areas of Los Angeles discovered this the hard way. When they killed the resident coyotes, the wild songbirds also disappeared. This is because the coyotes killed the rats who stole the birds’ eggs. When the coyotes were killed, the rodents bred out of control. The coyotes created a condition that furthered the propagation of the songbirds. This is analogous to “creating jobs.” In truth, the factory owner merely cultivates an opportune situation. The worker who fills the job creates the wealth.

With accumulated wealth and power comes obligation. This concept is called noblesse oblige and it means “the moral obligation of the rich or highborn to display honorable or charitable conduct.”

There are wealthy people who are quite philanthropic and I bless them. There will always be those who are more wealthy and are at the pinnacle of our economic chain. But they do not create wealth for others; their employees create wealth for them. Their duty is to be the caretakers of the common economic good -- the commonwealth. Their responsibility is not to provide you with a living, but to preserve the health of the ecosystem so that you can provide for yourself. As we are interdependent in nature, so we are in an economic system.

Learn this lesson well. Force your government with the power of your vote to hold the top predators of our economic system accountable, to hold them to a higher standard. By all means, strive to become one of these fat cats yourself. And when you get there, never, ever think you have no responsibility for those below you. Live instead in gratitude to your employees for sustaining you. The real power comes from the hearts and minds, the strong backs or nimble fingers of those who work for a living.