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There are ETFs that invest in international stocks. VT for example. That way you're not betting it all on one country.

That's a good point, betting on the world is a more viable strategy. That is at least, if the world is growing in an economic sense. With that said, since the world population will grow, I'd be willing to make that bet. In this case, I'd say the example holds up.

The point of investing in an ETF is not exactly to bet that the economy will grow no matter what, but to minimize variance and regret with the money you had at the beginning (i.e. you may end up in the red, but in terms of expectations, your likelihood of being in the red was no worse than the average).

Exactly - for me, investment is less about "making it big" and "beating the market," and more about, "storing the value of the work I did to earn this $X."

Such that, if the "burn rate" for my household today is $60k/yr, and I store $60k in investments, then when I withdraw at some future date $X will still be enough to support my household for a year.

The revenue of the S & P is 50% global so pay attention that 1) US ETFs already have huge global exposure and 2) many country ETFs have global corporations in them

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