>The whole economy for 40-ish years now been built on finance engineering away labors grip on anything in the US

Because when these plants and facilities come up for reinvestment the rules and laws have inevitably made a piecemeal sell out the only financially viable move.

The environmentalists point at the financiers. The financiers point at the environmentalists. It's like the two party system.

Worse, there was always some degree of unwritten understanding between government and big business. Like if big business built out a factory they would expect to use it for 50-100yr with refreshes every 30 or so. When the government started crapping on that sort of thing to the degree that various investments became wholly non-viable it became risky to make those investments, less of them, less to spread any risk over, more expensive, it's a spiral. And so if you can't be sure your facility will be allowed to be viable in the long term you've gotta milk what you can each quarter.