Political Crossfire Forums

I overheard a conversation today about corruption in the US vs. corruption in Russia. Basically the Russian guy (I assume he's Russian, he has an Eastern Europeanish accent) claims that the US is just as corrupted as any other country, people just don't realize it. The American guy is arguing that the US is one of the least corrupted, and definitely less corrupted than Russia because the US system is relatively transparent. The Russian guy then argues that the part of the US that is not transparent have the most power and is therefore more corrupted.

So riding on the coattail of their argument, I would like to present the question to you (except we'll use Mexico instead of Russia because we're more familiar with Mexico than Russia). In Mexico, corruption is widespread. If you get pulled over by a cop, you can pull out some money and bribe him. If you want to get a project approved, you can bribe a local official. Corruption is well known and people kind of know of the unspoken rules to deal with these corruptions. In the US, it's very rare that you can bribe a police officer for a speeding ticket or bribe a local official to get a project approved because the procedures in place are better established than those in Mexico. But in the US, where we find most of the corruption is in Wall Street and big corporations. These are few in numbers (at least relative to the total number of corruptions in other countries), but their corruption shocks the whole economy. They shock the world economy.

So, what do you think? Is the US less corrupted because we have less incidences of corrupted people, or are we more corrupted because the corruptions have bigger impacts?

Mexico. It's horrible here but we still have some basic functioning gov't services and a mostly functioning criminal justice system.

There? Not so much.

And the police are the worst.

In the 70's and 80's when the price of oil was steadily rising I remember reading many articles predicting that because of the higher oil prices, and the fact Mexico has huge oil reserves it would become a economic world power. Because of it's rampant out of control corruption that hasn't happened. Nor will it.

Corruption was bad to begin with but now with the narcos it's just a total mess.

The US is home to the most sophisticated forms of corruption. I'm pretty sure those cartels couldn't exist if it weren't for corruption in the US itself. That's probably why the Mexican authorities can't get a handle on it. Those cartels have powerful friends north of the border who help them.

For one thing they launder all their money here. So, how does that happen if the US is corruption free? We are talking about larger amounts than the legitimate economy generates. Marijuana is the #1 cash crop in the US by a large margin, for example. Not to mention the massive profits generated by the distribution of coke, speed, and heroin in the US.

That money is going somewhere, and it's happening 24/7. They aren't operating over here like that unless someone is letting them.

I wouldn't say it was worse than Russia, though. That is ridiculous.

The only perspective I could see that would set the US as more corrupt than Mexico, would be in the impact said corruption has on other countries. Corruption in the US can lead to pretty severe impacts in other countries.

Otherwise, while I might agree that there is more corruption quantitatively in the US, the impact is far less to the most important aspects of people's lives than in Mexico, so it would be "worse" in Mexico.

Corruption in the US is mereely more subtle. It's really more qualitative than quantitative. But it's just as widespread. People are people anywhere you go on the planet and all are equally, in varying levels, open and vulnerable to corruption. Since the US is a richer country, it of course does not have the blatant, in your face types of corruption that a country like Mexico or even Russia has. But it's also still very prevalent. The OP question answers itself with any common sense applied. Also, since the US "system" has been proven to be corrupt at the highest levels (Wall Street, etc) and also since it's a sort of mixture of Laissez-faire capitalism with cronyist monopolization, it has and will continue to have serious innate problems.

Let's also not forget how the US essentially gave support for decades to one of the most corrupt governments on earth, the former PRI.

I you pick Mexico or Russia to compare to, then US is clearly less corrupt. However, if you had chosen to compare to UK/Germany/Japan/South Korea/France/Australia etc, then the US is much more corrupt.

The worst part about corruption is the US is not how prevalent it is, but rather that most of it has actually been legalized.

You need to define what corruption is first. Is it just about taking bribes? While 3rd world countries like Mexico have more obvious forms of corruption would you consider old boy networks in government such as in the US to be corruption too?