In January 2007, just after an extended trip though Latin America, we wrote a column that suggested that, while fraud and bribery certainly exist in America, one of the country’s great competitive strengths is its relative lack of systemic corruption.
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Reader Rants and Raves
► I'm appalled at the abuse that exists in politics in America. Campaign fundraising is rife with influence peddling, bribes, and abuse. It isn't exactly like the corruption that we've all observed in foreign countries. But it still feels like corruption to me. Maybe we call it an American brand of corruption - unique to the way our political system operates. I'm sickened by it - and both parties are at fault.
— P.L.
► You are right as we do live in a country that you do not have worry about buying a home, car, TV, groceries, IRS, etc. and wonder about how much fraud is built into the price. Fraud comes mostly from greedy individuals, and we have to be more cautious or alert then ever before about this. Some fraud is worse today because of computers and/or soft fraud. Again, thanks for helping put fraud or corruption in a better perspective in many of our minds, and let us hope it improves or gets much less over time.
— R.R.
► You claim that the US doesn't have systemic corruption. On the other hand, an unusually high percentage of US 2006 voters cited corruption as an important reason for voting as they did. An organization called Transparency International rates perceptions of corruption every year. In 2006, the US tied for 20th out of 163 countries.
— P.R.
► You present a very naive view of America by looking at only half of the issue. You talk about the practice of government, in places like Argentina, extorting bribes from private enterprise as the price of doing business. You don’t talk about the reverse practice of private enterprise offering bribes to government (in the form of campaign contributions) which is the main way American government works. Evidently you don’t think of Halliburton's multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts as examples of corruption, or Bush's social security privatization plan or Medicare drug reform as examples of pay-offs to private business. Have you heard the expression "crony government"?
— B.W.
► As a stock investor, I feel that the despicably high salaries and perks of CEOs and some upper management today are a form of corruption.
— Anonymous
► I agree with the bulk of your argument. But there is a form of corruption in the U.S., which is largely ignored: the exchange of campaign contributions for legislative “earmarks.” That is a practice which robs the taxpayer and is just plain wrong.
— H.C.
► Your piece focused on bribes, payoffs, and kickbacks in the process of doing business. However, you failed to talk about another very large segment of corruption in the United States. The extent to which lobbyists and their corporate clients buy influence in the Congress and the Senate is a form corruption. CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" recently reported that 8 legislators at the Federal level have been charged or found guilty of corruption, and another 12 are under investigation by the FBI. Efforts to curtail the buying of influence through campaign reform legislation have had little or no effect. It continues at the peril of the working class, and indeed our economic system.
— M.S.
► Doesn't corruption hamper business and isn't honesty indeed the best policy? How come then that both China and India, which are so high on the corruption index, have managed to maintain much higher than average rate of growth consistently for almost the whole of the last decade? Are corruption and inflation the two essential evils for driving high growth?
— C.R.V.
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