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Our Own Public India

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2025 - 20:08
A YouTuber poses in front of the giant statue of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, in Sugarland Texas.
A YouTuber poses in front of the giant statue of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, in Sugarland Texas. (screen capture via YouTube). 

Our Own Public India

Fifteen years ago, Joel Stein got attacked for a piece he wrote for Time Magazine, about how his hometown of Edison, NJ had been transformed by Indian immigration. He titled it, "My Own Private India" (a play on the title of an early 1990s movie, My Own Private Idaho). This is probably the paragraph that drew the most flak for Stein, because he was clearly over the target: 

After the law [the 1965 Immigration Act] passed, when I was a kid, a few engineers and doctors from Gujarat moved to Edison because of its proximity to AT&T;, good schools and reasonably priced, if slightly deteriorating, post–WW II housing. For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.

What Edison New Jersey residents realized thirty years ago, the rest of America is realizing now.

Part of the reaction is driven by the sheer number and dispersion of Indian immigrants today. Unlike in the early 20th Century, where immigrants would congregate in their own urban neighborhoods, Indian immigrants seem to be pretty much everywhere. U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee drew a lot of angry replies this week, when he praised Indian immigration to his state. The Project For Immigration Reform sounded like Joel Stein circa 2010 in their comment on this: 

An Alien Culture 

As their worship of giant idols exemplifies, Hindu Indians represent an alien culture. But culture isn't just about differences in worship or food--it's also about the consideration you show strangers, and how scrupulously (or not) you adhere to laws and customs. This was highlighted recently when an illegal alien Indian truck driver killed three people in Florida while making an illegal U-turn. 

 

One commenter wondered if the driver was the same Indian truck driver who destroyed a bridge in Arkansas by not following traffic rules there. 

One suggested the driver's IQ may have been too low for him to understand what he had done, 

But this could also be a result of culture. All cultures don't value the lives of strangers the same. Jeremy Kaufman pointed this out on X: 

 

Traffic is a perfect system for understanding immigration.

Being a polite driver is not self-interested behavior. One can often go a bit faster by being antisocial.

In much of the world, traffic looks like the right. Because most people will not personally sacrifice to maintain a prosocial system.

Our traffic systems, our parks and common areas, our jury trials, and much of what is special about western society rests on this type of prosocial altruism (non-kin fairness).

When a population falls too low on this attribute, everything decent falls apart.

Supporting the culture point, another account noted studies found that Indians were among the least likely people to return a lost wallet: 

Avoiding A Race To The Bottom

Libertarianism appeals to many ZeroHedge readers, because they are the kind of people who would still follow common sense rules absent government regulations, but a lot of the rest of the world--including India--is not like that. That's something we need to consider in our immigration policy going forward. 

If you want to know what your country would be like with a lot of immigrants from a particular country, look at what their home country is like. 

On A More Positive Note...

I hate to end a post like this on a negative note. Fortunately, we've got an exciting trade teed up on the Portfolio Armor Substack for later today. It combines all these attributes: 

  • It's on a Portfolio Armor top ten name
  • It also fits squarely in our reindustrialization/nuclear energy theme.
  • Our options structure gives us a chance for a ~150% gain over the next few months. 
  • Our trade has a net credit, meaning we'll get paid to put it on. 
  • And its break even is below spot, meaning we'll make some money even if the stock just goes sideways from here.  
  • Maximum risk of less than $500, if you just use one contract. 

There are of course no guarantees we'll make money on this trade, but with all of those attributes aligned, I would place this kind of bet every time. If you want a heads up when we place it, you can subscribe the Portfolio Armor Substack below. 


Update: Here's today's yesterday's trade. You might get an even better entry on it today. 

Second Update: And here's today's trade: 

 

And of course, if you want to add downside protection here, you can use the Portfolio Armor website or iPhone app to scan for the optimal hedges given your risk tolerance and time frame.

 

 

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
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