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I think one of the biggest deterrents is the distribution of wealth. The gap between rich and poor in the US is much smaller in the US. In India, you might have a low-level government official making $300/mo and a millionaire businessman applying for a permit. A $100 bribe to speed along the process is nothing for the millionaire, but significant for the official. In the US, that same official would make $5000/month, so you'd have to make that bribe more attractive to risk losing his job and going to jail.

The same with police officers. In the Philippines, my brother-in-law was pulled over for speeding. He offered the cop PHP100 ($2.50) and we were on our way. Cops make $50-100k per year where I live, so you'd have to bribe them at least a few hundred or thousand (and take the risk that they arrest you for offering a bribe). You'd be better off paying the speeding ticket which is only $100-200.




"In the US, that same official would make $5000/month"

This is an important aspect of the US system, .gov salaries and staffing have remained relatively constant over the past couple decades as the overall standard of living of the population has dramatically declined. Public school teacher has gone from a pretty blah job for 2nd class citizens (just speaking the truth of how they felt about them at the time) to one of the few remaining decent middle class jobs in many areas. Its not the .gov jobs have gone up in pay or status or quality, its that all the .com jobs have descended deeply. So a DMV clerk knows darn well that a .com clerk doing the same job can now only hope to earn a hair over minimum wage... That keeps him honest. He's already the highest paid counter-person in the entire county, what exactly are you supposed to offer him to top that?

Another example, the old "those who can, do, those who can't, teach" Well a shop instructor in the old days might have made only half what a tool and die worker in the industry would make. But, the hours are better, working conditions are way better, arguably safer, some just like to teach... Fast forward from 1970 to 2010 and the shop instructor is still making the same pay, its just that most of the industry has left so frankly the comparative real world pay for the same guy with the same skills in .com world would be whatever gas station attendants get, or most likely whatever SS disability pays. Good luck bribing him for a better grade.

That's the problem I see with recent calls to massively drop .gov pay scales to keep them in line with the imploding standard of living in the USA.... You start paying the DMV clerk only as much as the counter lady at the supermarket, which is probably $7.25 part time no benefits no health insurance, in the short term you clean up financially, in the long term that DMV clerk is going to flood the market with fake IDs and such. I mean, why not? This job used to pay a living wage, well I'm going to get a living wage one way or another, unless that clerk is suicidal.

Its the same deal with cops. I had some friends who did the mall rentacop type jobs; literally minimum wage no benefits no health insurance often 1099 psuedo-contractors. You can bribe a mall cop, or so I'm told. The same guy with the same skills and education who makes it onto the force and starts pulling down $75K/yr instead of $7.50/hr is simply un bribe able.

You can't bribe royalty or the elite, or at least not as well as you can bribe poor people.


Source for the standard of living in the US decreasing over the past couple decades? I'm genuinely curious, as it seems like our material wealth has increased, as well as life expectancy.



> In the US, that same official would make $5000/month, so you'd have to make that bribe more attractive to risk losing his job and going to jail.

Which a millionaire can still easily afford to bribe him with a third of his monthly salary ($1700). If you go grab the Freedom House rankings or another such measure of corruption, you're not going to find that per capita income or Gini explain all of the variation from country to country.


Correct, but the point is that $5000/month is more than enough to get by on, so even getting doubling your income with a bribe has less marginal utility, especially when you're risking your job.

In contrast, an extra $100 for someone who is just scraping by could be make or break for that month.


> Correct, but the point is that $5000/month is more than enough to get by on

This is completely ad hoc and the interest of most people in acquiring ever more money suggests there is no saturation point.


Which a millionaire can still easily afford to bribe him with a third of his monthly salary ($1700)

The distribution of wealth in countries like India is such that the millionaire in India is likely just as wealthy as the millionaire in the US (if not more so). Given that fact, it is much easier to give out $100 bribes on a regular basis in India than it is to give out $1700 bribes in the US. My brother-in-law can give out $2.50 bribes a few times a week (he is wealthy by US standards but lives in the Philippines) much easier than I could give Los Angeles cops $500 bribes a few times a week.


But does that official in the US act as a gatekeeper for anything that the millionaire cares about ? I would suggest that mostly they don't.


People in the US don't need to get driver's licenses, building permits, and all the other stuff people in other countries need to get?


In the US small town police are often a source of corruption. I have several acquaintances who've been pulled over in small towns while traveling interstate and been asked for donations not to get issued tickets (for nonexistent violations)just so that they wouldn't have to come back to take care of it. (And to be fair, this is much more common near the southern border. So it's a little more complex and unusual.)




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