Everybody has their idea on where the economy is headed. And there are many economic indicators that claim to predict America’s economic future. Some work better than others. The Samson Indicator beats them all.

Consider America’s economic pillars—the columns supporting America’s economy.

Pillar 1: Housing Market

In August, America’s unsold housing inventory increased for the eighth straight month. At the current rate of sales, it would take 12.5 months to sell the houses already on the market. In the past, housing inventory averaged between six and seven months’ supply. During the boom years, there was sometimes less than a four-month supply.

The volume of house sales is simply crashing. In July, sales were down 27 percent from the previous month, the National Association of Realtors reported. Compared to last year, sales are down 25 percent—no small feat considering last year’s dismal numbers.

Why is the housing industry so important to the economy? During the euphoric years, the housing market and related industries, including investment bankers, mortgage brokers, realtors and appraisers, created up to 40 percent of all jobs. Now those jobs are gone, and some say for good.

Manias and Ponzi schemes—like America’s housing bubble—burn many people when they burst. And when they do, they drastically alter national psychology. Smaller is now better. Property taxes do matter. Lower rent is preferred. No upkeep is vogue. Increased mobility is valued. In short: Renting is in and buying is out.

The “get rich from housing” mantra is replaced by the “I will never buy a house again” creed.

Keeping their job is now the priority for most people. But jobs are not so easy to find anymore.

Pillar 2: Industry

After World War ii, America became an industrial superpower. “American made” was shipped around the world. Americans exported products, and in return, imported gold as payment.

The world needed what America produced, and America became rich. Employers couldn’t find enough workers, and thus the prosperity trickled down.

But wealth led to complacency and consumerism.

American culture no longer values production. America has allowed its manufacturers to go out of business or relocate overseas to low-wage, low-union locales. Recently General Electric announced that due to new government regulations requiring energy conservation, it would close its last incandescent light bulb factory in the U.S. Two hundred employees will lose their jobs when this last plant closes. Instead, the government has decided that consumers should purchase fluorescent light bulbs.

Unfortunately, florescent light bulbs are only produced overseas—so Americans will be forced to send money overseas to import them (so much for the promise of all those green jobs).

Yes, America manufactures a lot less of the things people want or need these days.

Take a look at Boeing—perhaps one of America’s most strategic companies. Where does Boeing produce its new Dreamliner aircraft?

The wings are produced by Mitsubishi in Japan. The horizontal stabilizers are made by Aeronautica Italy. The wingtips are contracted out to Korea and the wing flaps to Australia. The fuselage is fabricated in Japan, Italy and the United States, while the under-fuselage is made in Canada. The passenger doors are made in France, while the cargo and crew escape doors are stamped “made in Sweden.” The floor beams are manufactured in India. The wiring and landing gear are also made in France, while the engines are produced both in Britain and America.

Is Boeing really even an American company?

There was a time when the whole aircraft—from drawing board to factory floor—was made in America, providing jobs to tens of thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands more within the supply chain.

Those days are gone. In July, America lost 47,000 more manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even many of the minerals used to build the planes are imported. Although carbon fiber is produced in the United States, all the aluminum and about 70 percent of the titanium has to be imported because America’s mining industry has been allowed to atrophy. There is a whole host of other strategic minerals that America no longer mines too.

Ever wonder why China gets 10 percent growth and America gets 10 percent unemployment, as historian Niall Fergusson commonly notes?

Because we are a nation of consumers, while China is a nation of producers!

Actually, the economic divide is far worse than what Fergusson says. In August, China reported that its industrial production grew 13.9 percent, and that retail sales grew 18.4 percent—while back in America, the real unemployment rate is closer to 20 percent, according to John Williams at Shadowstats.

Pillar 3: Middle Class

But not all people are suffering.

The top 5 percent of income earners account for 37 percent of all consumer spending in America. Ten years ago, the top 5 percent accounted for 25 percent of spending. The top 1 percent of households own about 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. The top 20 percent own approximately 85 percent, according to sociology professor G. William Domhoff at the University of California–Santa Cruz. And the percentages have increased since 2007.

The gap between the rich and poor is growing. The middle class is getting crushed.

Forty million Americans, or one in eight people, are now on food stamps. An astounding 10 million workers are receiving unemployment benefits. So it is no surprise that recent studies show that a shocking 15 percent of Americans now live beneath the poverty line.

A large middle class is something that has set America apart from much of the rest of the world.

The middle class is said to be much of the power behind America’s dynamism and innovative spirit. These are people who build and create and are responsible for starting thousands of small businesses each year. They are the brains within the mega corporations. Think of all the products and inventions over the years that were the product of middle-class Americans. Think Bill Gates and Henry Ford. These men are products of middle-class America.

If you are reading this, you are probably a product of middle-class America. But look around you: The middle class is being destroyed. Your friends and colleagues, if they are like most Americans, are saturated with debt. Students are graduating universities with useless degrees and tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Americans act like they are wealthy, living beyond their means, but it is really all a sham—an expensive, unsustainable, debt-powered sham, but a sham nonetheless. And it is coming to a crashing end.

Cracked and Buckling

America’s economic pillars are snapping like small twigs. No matter where you look—our massive debt, state debt, local debt, personal debt, our dependence on foreign lending, our addiction to oil, the Federal Reserve printing money to fund the Treasury, our sick currency, the economic quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan—the stress lines are showing.

It doesn’t take a genius to see which way the economy is headed.

The Samson Indicator is this: When the pillars break, the roof collapses. As it is, what is left of America’s support columns is barely holding up. It is almost as if some invisible force is just barely keeping the building together.

America could quickly be thrust back into the Great Depression or worse. It wouldn’t take much more of a push for it all to come crashing down: a failed bond auction or two, a surprise banking failure, a new war. It could be any number of things, because America’s whole economic house is shaky.

Yet, as depressing as that may sound, America’s looming economic collapse will not last forever. The system is headed for collapse, but once the current unsustainable system is wiped out, and once people are fed up enough with the current system, then a new honest and affluent system will be built.

Unfortunately, the collapse is coming first. For the hope of what comes after, read The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like by Herbert W. Armstrong. This booklet reveals what the Bible teaches about America’s near—and prosperous—future.