Why have the 2000s been so bad for U.S. business?

I am not talking about the current crash; I am talking about the decade leading up to it. During that decade, median income did not grow. The stock market did not grow. U.S. corporate profits grew on average, but it was almost all financial-sector profits; and those profits quickly turned out to have been illusions. Productivity grew on paper, but again, a lot of that was financial-sector; the productivity was an illusion.

So basically, nobody in America made real money in the 2000s. That means that our economy stagnated for a decade. Our businesses didn't earn more. Our workers and machines didn't produce more.

This should give Republicans pause. For decades, Republicans sold themselves as the party of business (even if they didn't use that phrase). The idea was that business-friendly government policies would lead to wealth creation, and that the wealth would get spread throughout the entire economy. Liberals worried that the rich would gain more than the poor, but that was (justifiably, in my opinion) a secondary concern; you can't eat income equality for breakfast.

But here's the thing: Republican economic policies didn't work in the 2000s. We cut taxes like crazy, we cut regulation massively, we weakened unions. It didn't work. Businesses did not thrive (except for financial businesses, which fake-thrived). Forget about inequality and all that; there was less to go around, period!

Why? Why did our country's economy perform so badly for 8 years?

Maybe it was because of the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000. But seriously - 7 years of stagnation, followed by a depression, from the bursting of one stock bubble? No cyclical recession lasts 7 years and is followed by a depression.

Maybe it was because of 9/11. But World War 2 didn't dent our economy, and it was a lot more destructive, right?

Maybe it was because of Enron and all the accounting scandals in 2003. But wasn't that just a case of people trying to report fake income because they were failing to produce real income?

The question of why our economy did so bad in the 00s is an open one. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is something involving my favorite two words, "public goods." While China was building roads and bridges like crazy, we let ours fall into disrepair. Our percentage of world R&D spending went down and down. Our schools continued to suck. Worse infrastructure means higher costs for businesses; less cutting-edge technology means lower profit margins for businesses; less-skilled employees mean higher unit costs for businesses.

Cutting taxes and regulation probably helped our economy when Reagan did it in the early 80s; by the time Bush II came around, that bullet had been shot. What Republicans did was to continue to adhere to an anti-government dogma that denied that some kinds of government spending help business.

Duh, right?

But don't expect the Republicans to learn their lesson. Expect them to keep marching forward, arms outstretched, chanting the zombie-like mantra of "more tax cuts and less regulation." Well, maybe now businesses will think twice before contributing to the Republican party. They tried that, and they suffered for it. We suffered too.