Hi,
It is odd that almost everyone wants to find "THE" cause that causes a change. I think that many times, there are multiple reasons that changes occur.
For instance, some want to point out that THE cause for the ridership change was 9/11. If the economy was not brittle, 9/11 would not have been as traumatic.
1/1/1998 was the implementation of NAFTA. I was in a job where we filled a niche market and when many companies moved electronics manufacturing to Mexico (for instance Scientific Atlanta moved manufacturing from Atlanta to Juarez Mexico), the company I worked for had the number of workers drop from 2 full time and 2 part time to 1 full time (the owner). This started making the economy brittle.
Bill Clinton's desire to allow high risk loans to minorities also caused the economy to be less able to take hits. Many more incidents totaled a very brittle economy when 9/11 hit and caused a recession.
9/11 caused things like travel to conferences and meetings to be morphed into teleconferencing requiring less business expenditures. This shrinking of the economy from many different reasons caused high unemployment and those employed to have less disposable cash leaving less money for luxuries such as vacations.
It is not political party based for sure. The US economy has changed to a consumer one from a manufacturing power house.
Items such as wanting businesses to pay "their fair share" is a con job. The business passes higher taxes on to those who purchase their products or services or those same businesses close up shop or go overseas to remain competitive.
If you think about it, even your Gross pay could be considered a con job. If you earn "$60K" a year, your take home pay is much less due to items that are withheld (union dues, income taxes, mandatory retirement contributions to name a few). Consider this from the employer point of view. They have benefits and overhead to add onto the same "$60K" a year wage and so 60K is not really correct from either side of the equation - employer or employee.
Food for though.
DOug vV