I’M always looking for new ways to improve my family’s financial situation, which is slightly less promising than the economy of Greece.

Debts like our mortgage aren’t going anywhere, and our mutual funds languish. I don’t see an international bailout coming. We are not too big to fail; we are, in fact, the right size to fail. Austerity measures have been less than successful: my attempt to put the cats on half rations was met with their counterargument that kibble falls under the budget category of entitlement spending. Then they chewed on my ankles. Any improvement will have to come on the revenue side.

Here’s what I’ve come up with — and it involves child labor.

Now, before you go all human-rights crusader on me and start bringing up those agonizing pictures of sad-eyed little millworkers, let me just say that I’m talking about enlisting my own children in clean, high-tech sweatshoppery. Think of it as pioneering a trickle-up economy. I like the sound of that, since I spent a lot of time being trickled on after each of my children was born.

Consider novels. That wunderkind author Christopher Paolini has sold gazillions of books about dragons. So why can’t my own kids write books, too? These days, it’s not even absolutely necessary to attract the attention of a publisher: a couple of friends have self-published their works, and now children are getting into the act, too. At least two high school friends of my son Joseph have self-published books. In an age when twenty-something sons end up moving back in and sleeping on the national couch, we should applaud this teenage enterprise. But how can I get Joe in on the action?