A few weeks ago a friend of mine from Nicaragua visited. One aspect of American culture he admired was our lack of corruption.
“Oh dear, Marlon,” I replied. “We are a deeply corrupt nation. The difference between our two nations is that in Nicaragua you have both ‘corruption of the poor,’ such as bribes to police officers, bribes to health inspectors, home inspectors, low level bureaucrats and the like and ‘corruption of the rich’ which is usually institutionalized, a part of the legislative process, includes the corrupt purchase of large scale national rents collection, and is unambiguously unethical. Everyone, in Nicaragua, wets their beak, whereas only the rich and powerful in America participate.”
Today Responsible Statecraft offers up the epitome of American corruption:
“RTX (formerly Raytheon) has agreed to pay nearly $1 billion in fines, which is one of the highest figures ever for corruption in the arms sector. To incur these fines, RTX participated in price gouging on Pentagon contracts, bribing officials in Qatar, and sharing sensitive information with China.”
Price gouging? Of course. Bribery in Qatar? No surprise. But sharing sensitive information with China meets my definition of treason. Plus, a billion dollars in fines is much more than the cost of doing business. That’s a penalty that hurts the bottom line.
What makes me sickest is that this is a company that profits off of patriotism, and the demonization of foreign groups, like civilians in Yemen, Gaza and the Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia has rebuilt its defense industry to serve the Russian national interest, not corporate titans. If, heaven forbid, we get into an all out war, and cannot “win” (loosely defined) within six weeks, we’re toast. Our defense industry is simply not tooled up for that kind of capacity and we’ve undergone far too much de-industrialization to keep up with our peer competitors manufacturing capacity. That’s a sobering thought.
StewartM
Developing country corruption (Vietnam, in this case):
Police officer pulls over truck. Truck driver is offered a deal-pay either a fine of 1,00,000 VND or give the police officer 500,000 VND and nothing is said. In such a case, the truck driver and the police office gain while those at the top lose revenue.
In the US, it’s drug prices. Or ticket prices. Or the fact that we have to do our own taxes (in other countries, the government sends you the filled-out form and you are free to challenge it or to say ‘yes’). Or the fact we provide allow free open-sourced tax software. And there’s SS disability, no matter how sick or injured you are you will always be denied, and will have to hire a lawyer to sue and get your money 2 years or so later (so the lawyer can take a big chunk of it).
Whole business models in the US rely on this kind of corruption.
StewartM
Oops, meant to say that the IRS does NOT provide free open-source tax software. That of course would make TurboTax and H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt *sad*.