I'm sure many of you have even sillier stories than that.

I don't have any sillier story than that. I *did* leave my last job, though, in great part because managers started chanting "E"-this and "E"-that and "digital transformation" in a way that made it perfectly clear that they had no bloody idea what they were talking about and that they were mindlessly surfing a big buzzword wave. It made me too nervous. I had to go. All of their "E"-ness has since collapsed in a big, messy, layoff-strewn heap.

I've kind of wondered if someplace like Brazil could be the hot new place to be in a hundred years. They certainly have the natural resources, if they could get it together in other ways.

I remember reading in one of Richard Feynman's books his tale of life as a guest lecturer at a big Brazilian university. A big generalizatuion on his part, but he pretty much decided that their higher education system was constructed in such a way to eliminate critical thinking and to solely focus on near-rote learning of received wisdom (such as his). He thought this would have a pretty nasty impact on Brazil.

In 50 years, America's role may be predominantly in Entertainment, Advertising,
and Finance. (I assume this is what you meant by "financialization," above.)

The term is Phillips' (though not sure he invented it). Yes, this is what he means, I think, although he is more focused on the finance aspects -- shifting from growing cotton to trading cotton futures, from making steel to loaning money to a steel company.