Home values are rising as wages stagnate

New data from the National Association of Realtors shows home values are sitting at 93 cents on the dollar what they were 7 years ago at the peak of the bubble.

That means housing in most of America has made a dramatic recovery. Of course, this is not true everywhere. There are parts of Florida, Las Vegas, and Atlanta that are still in terrible trouble. But for the most part, we’ve seen a significant recovery on the national level.

So why is it that we still feel sour about where things are in America? Because even though incomes are rising again and a sliver of the population is doing great, incomes at jobs have remained sluggish. The median income in the U.S. is still 6% below where it was in 2007 at the start of the Great Recession.

That’s why people feel not so hot!

Yet we will be OK as a country, despite the fact that people still think the future is bleak. Our prospects are bright because of our capacity to invent and innovate, a lot of it driven by our energy boom.