In case you haven’t noticed, The United States of America is the throes of a self-induced economic crisis from which it cannot hope to recover without a complete turnaround in political policy.

The strategy seems to be closing budget gaps not by recovering revenue via restoration of top tax rates, but by cutting citizen services (including unemployment insurance) and putting the squeeze on organized labor and public employees.

In the private sector, meanwhile, job security is a fantasy, there are five times as many applicants as job openings, and was reported that General Electric earned five BILLION dollars in the United States alone and didn’t pay a dime in federal taxes. (The company’s chief executive officer is a member of a presidential council on job creation.)

In other words, if you’re making less than $250,000, welcome to the underclass – it's not just for gangsters and welfare recipients anymore. And the gangsters get to brag that they support themselves.

Though they don’t count on the kind of handouts and bailouts that General Electric and the welfare recipients get, however, gangsters don’t pay their fair share of taxes, either. That leaves the rest of us stuck in the middle and expected to pay all the bills with money we have less of – apparently, it's up to the “stuck in the middle” class to solve the economic crisis.

With the economic future looking bleaker than ever – not including the reductions that you should expect from Social Security when you retire – is there anything you can do to ensure you’ll have at least enough to get by without working three jobs at once? What is the solution to YOUR economic crisis? Consider this one:

If you start now and invest a little bit of both time and money in learning legitimate online marketing, you can end up commanding a steady part-time and possibly full-time extra income. Not only have thousands of people done it, some have even become millionaires – and not with get-rich-quick scam gimmickry or medically-dubious products.

Legitimate online marketing involves using the Internet to identify user audience segments who are looking for a particular product or service, which can be as downloadable as an e-book or as tangible as a real book.

Acting as an affiliate, you pair up that audience with a vendor who is offering that product or service online. The vendors range from the very familiar – your favorite department store, credit card, liquor, and software companies -- to self-employed writers and consultants. You could even eventually become a vendor yourself!

Write an article informing the audience segment about the vendor’s merchandise, and if someone buys, the vendor pays you a commission. With no limit to how many vendors or products you can represent, all you have do is keep repeating the process, and a steady income is possible in a matter of months.

It’s understandable if you're thinking that the solution to the economic crisis shouldn’t sound so simple. But if you can learn the basics of legitimate online marketing, you just might be able to “un-stick” yourself from the middle class permanently!