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Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

589 points by karakoram 13d ago

econ 8d ago
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/pentagon-never-audited-astonishing-military-spending https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/pentag... >The result is an astounding $10tn in taxpayer money that has gone unaccounted for since 1996. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-go... >While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015. The report by Dr. Skidmore is easy to find. https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/ https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-su...
java-man 13d ago
Who are these 11%?
- slater 13d ago
  The ones smiling and holding "their" ladders
  - actionfromafar 12d ago
    And the ones who believes Mr Trump drained the swamp.
    - slater 12d ago
      [they-are-the-same-picture-dot-gif]
- dmix 12d ago
  Government workers
- bigstrat2003 12d ago
  I wasn't surveyed but I would be part of that group. I believe the government has been corrupt for as long as I've been alive, if not longer. I also believe that it is not actually worse now than in the past. And contrary to what many uncharitable people in this thread claim, I am equally unhappy no matter which party backs the crooks in power. I just want a government that serves me, and I haven't had that in my 41 years on this earth.
Webstir 13d ago
But, not the politicians I voted for. It's always the other guys.
- fhdkweig 12d ago
  That would have been a more interesting question to ask. It's a shame they didn't.
- newAccount2025 12d ago
  Nah. At the end of the day it’s candidate A vs. B. Once they’re all corrupt you still have to decide between them and pick the lesser evil as you see it. They’re creatures of ambition and incentives, and the corruption is a feature of the system. It sucks but what can you do but vote for the corrupt dems or the corrupt republicans?
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
  - bigstrat2003 12d ago
    > It sucks but what can you do but vote for the corrupt dems or the corrupt republicans? Vote for a third party, or don't vote at all. Casting a vote for someone you don't actually want in office ("the lesser of two evils") is negligent.
    - amanaplanacanal 12d ago
      The reality is one of those two people is going to get elected. Your vote for Mickey Mouse isn't going to affect the outcome. Of course most elections aren't close enough for your vote to matter at all.
- cucumber3732842 12d ago
  This is tautologically true for everyone all the time because most of the government is unelected.
swed420 13d ago
Related: New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents (January 12, 2026) https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-political-independents.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...
- trentor 13d ago
  Right on track to be the next Russia. Ironic but also incredibly funny.
  - FpUser 13d ago
    He who kills the dragon becomes one.
- jeffbee 12d ago
  An "independent" in America is a person who greatly desires everything Trump is doing but realizes that makes them a bad person and therefore refuses to admit it.
  - the_gastropod 12d ago
    I know you’re going to get downvoted to hell, but you’re pretty much spot on. There’s something strangely desirable about being seen as the edgy contrarian “not left, not right” person. But 9 times out of 10, that person has approximately the same incoherent worldview most Trumpists have.
    - bigstrat2003 12d ago
      He's not spot on at all, and that's why he's being downvoted. He's examining the world through a false dichotomy of "if you aren't on my side, you support my enemies". But the reality is that most people who consider themselves independent are actually independent and vote for whomever they consider to be the best candidate.
      - 12d ago
add-sub-mul-div 13d ago
I thought electing an outsider with theretofore no experience nor interest in governing was supposed to break the system in a good way so as to erase the incumbent problems and rebuild with common sense and integrity.
- autoexec 12d ago
  Giving someone without common sense and integrity unchecked power is probably not a good way to obtain common sense and integrity in your government.
- netsharc 12d ago
  Well, that reads like the justification you want to give to yourself after the fact.. the interesting question is what's the real reason...
- vannevar 12d ago
  The problem with government was that wealthy charlatans were rigging the system in their own favor. Naturally, the solution was to put a wealthy charlatan in charge of the whole thing and eliminate the middle man.
autoexec 13d ago
Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently. I don't think it's a good thing. It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks, which suggests that they believe they no longer have to be. That's not a healthy sign for what's supposed to be a democracy.
- iAMkenough 12d ago
  Sucks seeing the federal government weaponize the U.S. Postal Service to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted.
  - BLKNSLVR 12d ago
    Also gives an idea as to how desperate and paranoid they are.
  - vkou 12d ago
    What would anyone expect to happen when people are stupid enough to elect someone who tried, with multiple parallel methods, including an attack on Congress, to steal one election already.
  - mrtesthah 12d ago
    It doesn't just "suck" -- it's a path to dictatorship that threatens the freedoms and lives of its citizens.
    - iAMkenough 12d ago
      It's not a path, it's a result. That sucks.
  - imthatsteve 12d ago
    Okay so now that everyone has been shown how they can cheat the election with mail in ballots. How do you propose to stop the republicans from using mail in ballots to steal the next election? Since clearly you cant use the feds to weaponize the post office. How do the democrats secure an election? Do you just make sure you stuff the box with more mail in ballots than the other guy? You already made it illegal to show id when casting a ballot so if the republicans want to play the same game as the democrats how do you stop em? Do you just claim that its okay when we do it?
tekla 12d ago
Note the numbers between 2010 and 2025 were in the 72% to 79% range if you read the article. So numbers have not actually increased that much.
- ProfessorLayton 12d ago
  2010 was right after the great recession, and after the people that caused it got bailed out by the government.
  - mswphd 12d ago
    2010 is also Citizen's United.
- lynndotpy 12d ago
  Think about it as 25% who disagree to only 11. Less than half of the people who thought corruption is not widespread still think so. Further, the US is now the #1 ranked country in corruption. I think it's more useful to think about the closed operations on the 0% to 100% range. A change of ~75% to 89% does not seem like much, but "only an 18% increase" is not a closed operation, so it's not so meaningful. You'll see this in machine learning, e.g. 70% accuracy to 75% accuracy is not as impressive as 98% to 99%, despite having a larger change.
throw0101a 12d ago
Even before this new record high, in the previous ~15 years the average seemed to be around 75% (±), which seems… high? I would perhaps understand the US public thinking that (some levels of) government being "incompetent", but not corrupt. By some measure the US does seem to have 'decent' scores for perception of corruption: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index * https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025 Meta: in some ways it seems that the public's perception of government is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the US there is a large vein of "government is bad/incompetent/corrupt" and that's apparently what the US often gets. While in (e.g.) Scandinavian countries there appears to be a higher level of trust in government, and the people there tend to elect more competent politicians (?).
- wat10000 12d ago
  I'd guess it comes down to what counts as "the government." Millions of people work for the federal government, and millions more for state and local governments. Is there widespread corruption among them? I don't think so. And I don't think my countrymen think so either. But "the government" is often meant as just the very top. The President is corrupt. Big swathes of Congress are corrupt. We have a Supreme Court justice more or less openly accepting bribes. Among that small group, I would be comfortable saying that corruption is widespread.
  - mswphd 12d ago
    I (and I'm sure others) would obviously agree. just a smattering of the obvious cases * for years people have noticed that many members of congress use privileged information to pick stocks. * lobbying post-Citizen's United has a very decidedly "buying politicians" aspect to it * a congressman (Menendez) was literally arrested while holding gold bars from a foreign government. he went to prison, but is the only person on this list who has iirc. * the former mayor of new york (a long-time police offer) was embroiled in a Very Funny, very obviously true corruption scandal for turkish airline tickets. the prosecution against him was dropped for no good reason.
  - 12d ago
surfmike 12d ago
The most blatant recent case is Trump selling early access to his Truth Social posts https://abcnews.com/Politics/profoundly-corrupt-trump-sued-federal-court-selling-early/story?id=135591214 https://abcnews.com/Politics/profoundly-corrupt-trump-sued-f...
layla5alive 12d ago
Much of the 11% who say it isn't are in on the corruption!
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 12d ago
If this is the question they asked: Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not? Then that's very open to interpretation. Even if I thought the federal government was not corrupt, but I did think the local or state government was corrupt (or many local governments were, not just my own), I'd answer yes to this question. They should have broken it down a bit more.
xnx 12d ago
"Drain the swamp". Everything is projection. What they say about the Democrats is what they are or aspire to be.
- etchalon 12d ago
  I wonder if it's less projection than permission. They believe that all government is corrupt and thus they're not doing anything wrong by being openly corrupt.
  - Loughla 12d ago
    I don't know why you're being down voted. Your statement does seem to be the literal truth.
  - ozozozd 12d ago
    I agree. Though it’s a bit of a self-serving belief, rather than a genuine belief.
jghn 12d ago
Unfortunately if one asks "who is the cause of the corruption" you'd see two very strong modes in the data, and therein lies the issue regarding fixing things.
pseudosavant 12d ago
Looking at their charts, Democrats and Independents clearly think corruption is up a lot since 2024. But Republicans think corruption is down from 2024. The polarization of the electorate in the U.S. is pretty incredible.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- BLKNSLVR 12d ago
  Their corruption is bad. (Ie. the other party) I wonder if the split would still be roughly the same if a Democrat was in power at the time of the survey. Edited to add: Answer seems to be in the article, as pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571258 First diagram in the article shows uptick, but since 2010 it's been in the 70-80% range. So it seems pretty party-agnostic.
  - xirdstl 12d ago
    Biden was in power for the survey in 2024.
  - paisawalla 12d ago
    Per the second chart: Since 2024, Democrats went from being the most trusting (57%) to the most skeptical (91%), bringing all groups to within 10 points of each other on the question. This is not a "both sides" situation: Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics. There is no universal implication here IMO, this is just Democrats joining the 80-percenters, i.e. everyone
    - vannevar 12d ago
      >...Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics. This is not surprising; a big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years. No real evidence of that was ever uncovered, but it didn't stop Fox News and every Republican leader from constantly referring to the accusations as if they were true. One the other hand, Trump is openly accepting huge payments from foreign governments, and never even bothered to separate himself from his companies. Republicans were at 87% due to general distrust of government and the rumor of phantom corruption, while Democrats (who tend to be more trusting of government) rose to the same level only on clear evidence of real corruption. The authors don't break it out by parties, but the overall level during Trump's first term is about the same as Biden's. Since the article notes that Republican skepticism is higher in general and more consistent, this implies that Democrats' perception of corruption is much higher in Trump's second term than his first. Which makes sense, the Republican leadership was much more responsible in applying guardrails in the first term than the second. Trump is getting away with a LOT more in his second term.
amazingamazing 12d ago
> Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not? How is corruption defined for the purposes of this survey? If there is none (I assume there is not), then it is only natural this number go up as the media highlights and propagandizes and highlights all actions taken by all government officials.
sublinear 12d ago
I'm curious how these polls are conducted. These polls are at least already biased since people self-select. If they're online only, even moreso. If they're only advertised to echo chambers, even moreso. Anyway, the result may be that the polls are only measuring younger people with nothing better to do. That's interesting but only a record high amongst that subpopulation. I'm fairly certain this is business as usual.
ksudb 12d ago
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deleted 12d ago
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chris_wot 12d ago
I’m not an American. Those not American are frankly gobsmacked that U.S. citizens voted the current President in a second time. You all literally saw what he did in his first term!
- chronc7403 12d ago
  > You all literally saw what he did in his first term! Yeah, he stopped US military from defending other countries for free. Soft power doesn’t pay your rent/mortgage.
  - techblueberry 12d ago
    Soft power is _literally_ what pays your rent and mortgage.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 12d ago
      Switzerland has much more soft power than the US, due to Switzerland avoiding military entanglements.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 12d ago
    [flagged]
    - slater 12d ago
      From that very same link: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 12d ago
        Vote however you want, but I'm sick of people abusing the flag feature.
        shusaku 12d ago
lovich 12d ago
I don’t know why this should be surprising since it’s all out in the open now. They made Carter give up his family peanut farm to be President. Trump and his family are selling stock every week, running crypto currency rug pulls, accepting gifts ostensibly for the country that they say will be donated to Trump at the end of his term(the Qatar plane). It’s all out in the open under Trump term 2. At this point if you think there isn’t corruption I assume you also think RFK has the right idea about health care and vaccinations.
- insane_dreamer 12d ago
  yet Republicans think corruption is _down_ since 2024 :smacks-head:
mberning 12d ago
The corruption is bad enough at the local level. I can’t even fathom how much theft is going on at the state and federal level. It’s one of the more frustrating things to see how much money you are paying into the system for such meager benefits. We can’t even get sidewalks installed in my area, but the township can certainly give a sweetheart tax break to one of their buddies to build a new gas station.
jimt1234 12d ago
Citizens United. Nothing else to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
- hackernud3s 12d ago
  Citizens United is widely considered the event that would cause US corruption to spiral out of control, but there was always the hope that a constitutional amendment could get us out of this. Neither side ever even attempted it. Every once in a while you get some lip service about small money donations but nobody ever tried to go after the problem at the root in all this time. Think about what that means.
- asdff 12d ago
  Some local governments are fully designed to be perfect vehicles for corruption by this point. The incentives just lead to it over time as one corrupt prick makes things a little easier for themselves and their ilk to operate without oversight. Things compound over the decades of people drawn to the graft opportunities in local government with their campaigns funded by the beneficiaries of the graft, against little to no opposition.
  - FireBeyond 12d ago
    Absolutely. In my town the politicians on the planning and zoning committees are all best friends with all the developers in town, and not just "we work in the same area, socialize at the same events", but "we go on joint family vacations with our kids together and are in each other's bridal parties"... ... and then wonder why the public gets mad when the environmental impact study says "not good", public works says "area roads can't support the traffic influx and can't support increasing capacity due to geography and existing homes" and still approve the developer's new project anyway.
giantg2 12d ago
Lots of people here are focused on one guy. But the the article says "widespread". In my experience, much of the corruption is at a local or state level. At the federal level it seems the corruption is mostly related to agencies (GAO reports) and lobbying.
- vannevar 12d ago
  It doesn't seem like they asked about specific levels or branches of government, so presumably the respondents were giving a general impression. And in that case, it's hard to believe that a corrupt President wouldn't strongly influence the response.
  - giantg2 12d ago
    It's only 17% higher than in 2010. Seems like a majority believed the government was corrupt prior to Trump.
- 0ckpuppet 12d ago
  usaid gec ngo all federal all exist to facilitate corruption
  - muwtyhg 12d ago
    What do you think NGO stands for?
- fittingopposite 12d ago
  A fish rots from the head down
trashface 12d ago
The disparity between Trump and previous presidents on income earned while president is so vast, you need a log scale graph to make it meaningful. Your favorite LLM can generate it for you (except maybe grok, I presume)
jmyeet 12d ago
In many countries around the world, corruption is a huge problem. But pretty much everywhere it happens there's a surface-level denial or attempt to hide it. If you're Putin or Erdogan, for example, you'll have children who get beneficial contracts and there's layers of obfuscation. So there are three things that are scary about Trump's corruption: 1. It's so brazen and on a scale rarely seen. Apparently he's made $2 billion since coming back into office and he does so openly. Pardons are for sale. Truth Social has a feature to pay to get early access to posts to trade on, basically. There are crypto rug pulls. The list goes on; 2. A third of the population simply doesn't care and will defend it no matter what; and 3. He'll never be held accountable by any future administration. This is the worst part. If this happened in China, he'd go to prison and his assets would be seized. This would extend to his family and their assets. Just look at Hui Ya Kan [1]. The US just does not punish the wealthy. Look at the Sacklers and Purdue. There's clear evidence they hid the fact that Oxycontin was addictive despite their public claims and they have a large amount of responsibility for the opioid crisis. In a just world, they would all die penniless in 6x8 foot grey prison cells. And who went to prison for the 2008 subprime crisis? Oh, that's right. Nobody. This also extends to the powerful. George W. Bush had an illegal torture program. Who went to prison for it? Only 1 guy: the whistleblower John Kiriakou for talking about it. The Supreme Court is utterly corrupt. Anthony Kennedy allegedly traded his retirement for a job for his son. John Roberts's wife makes tens of millions in headhunting fees for finding lawyers to argue before teh Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is just one bribe after another. The entire government is captured by people who want to get rich by betraying their country to the ultra-wealthy. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-evergrande-founder-sentenced-life-imprisonment-cctv-reports-2026-08-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-evergrande-founder...
stinkbeetle 12d ago
I remember when this used to be a far right conspiracy theory.
- tstrimple 12d ago
  The far right won office and made it manifest. Just like they complain on government inefficiency and that it can never accomplish anything while explicitly making those things worse while in power to prove their point.
  - stinkbeetle 12d ago
    Yes possibly so I'd have to see the evidence for that, but my point is it's great that such a large majority of people are now well aware of the horrific and disgusting corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence in governments.
    - atmavatar 12d ago
      For some quick and easy evidence, you could look at the history of the Post Office. USPS has always been the poster child for efficient and effective government agencies. Despite claims otherwise, the agency still manages to deliver letters and other postage to areas private industry like FedEx, UPS, et. al. would never touch. Unfortunately, over the years, Republican Congresses and Presidents have repeatedly attempted to sabotage the agency. Some recent(-ish) examples: * The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required USPS to create a fund to pay the cost of post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future. * The Republican-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy overseeing the removal of 711 sorting machines as well as a number of public mailboxes in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which, due to Covid, was expected to have larger-than-normal use of mail-in ballots. Not only did it cause significant concern regarding mail-in ballots, but it also resulted in significant delays and backlogs in general mail delivery.
      - stinkbeetle 12d ago
        Oh no, I don't need evidence that governments are dirty hives of corrupt incompetent criminals, leeches, and parasites.
MBCook 12d ago
I would be really interested in a much, much longer timescale version of the graph. Like 50 to 100 years.
CyberDildonics 12d ago
Interesting that so far I don't see any comments about the epstein files and half of them not being released even under congressional order, let alone congress now being recessed for two weeks to avoid another vote for a second eptein transparency act.
chr15m 12d ago
Most democracy measurement projects and indices have shown a decline in democratic performance for the US over the past decade. EIU reclassified the country from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy" in 2016. V-Dem went from "liberal democracy" to "electoral democracy" in 2025. When you have a wide variety of entities measuring the same trend, it is probably broadly correct. The hope the good citizenry find a fix. [To be fair the trend is global unfortunately: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/countries-democracies-autocracies-row https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/countries-democracies-aut...]
- dozerly 12d ago
  The US’s democracy has been under fire from foreign nations and corporations for years. It has slowly degraded because of it. What we’re seeing now is the “all at once” portion.
  - baxtr 12d ago
    It started on 9/11. I find it sad that those terrorist might can get what aimed for after all.
    - aprilthird2021 12d ago
      They got it when the PATRIOT ACT was passed. That was the proof that all our rights and liberties are conditional, and Trump uses the revelation of that back then to pull off everything he is doing now
      - Arodex 12d ago
        I would think the bailouts after the 2007 financial crisis destroyed more trust and lives than 9/11 and the Patriot Act.
        aprilthird2021 12d ago
        If so, another terrible decision by our voting populace
rush86999 12d ago
It's like everyone knows the dirty truth, but no one wants to do anything about it. Why? Self-interest has made everyone blind to open corruption. The worst part is reality hits 3-4 years later, and the big guy is already out and about. Already with his billions, partying in the Caymans. Welcome to democratic oligarchy!!
- fifticon 12d ago
  The worse part is whatever competent hoodlums will arrive after him, to enjoy the gates he has crashed
52-hertz_whale 12d ago
4 year smash and grab. Foxes are in the henhouse.
worik 12d ago
So that is 11% who do not read the news, do not know what corruption is or are benefiting
HeDoesntKnow 12d ago
[flagged]
snark_attack 12d ago
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khriss 12d ago
Unfortunately, decades of media conditioning and extreme polarization has led to a situation in which the normal checks and balances have been severely degraded or are non functional. A significant fraction of the population is happy to overlook excesses from 'their' side. Combine that with extreme gerrymandering and you have the recipe for a situation where a majority of elected lawmakers have no real fear of an election loss. We have a situation where the same people who were apoplectic about Hunter Biden's laptop are whistling past things like the pardon of George Santos and the Binance founder(with Trump admitting he didn't who CZ was). There is no easy path back from this situation. Democracies that have reached this stage of late have struggled to come back.
jens_tlb 12d ago
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kstenerud 12d ago
What I find fascinating about this is how the American commenters are eating their own, Democrats blaming Republicans, Republicans blaming Democrats, both spinning conspiracy yarns about "the other side" as well as independents ("the other side in disguise"), and generally treating each other like "the enemy". Some other interesting tidbits: - In America, perception of government corruption has consistently held about 11% higher than the perception of corruption in business. Even with the massive uptick of both since 2024, they've remained a similar relative distance apart. - Since 2023, only four countries out of the 132 in which Gallup has posed this question annually have scored nominally above the 89% recorded in the U.S. this year: Lebanon in 2024 (92%), Peru in 2025 (92%), and Ghana and Nigeria in 2024 (both 90%).
Animats 12d ago
This has to stop. Ask candidates how tough they're willing to get on corruption. A good starting point for the next administration is to offer an amnesty on criminal prosecution to government employees who report anything of value they received outside their employment during the previous administration. If it's reported, they're safe from criminal prosecution. Anything that's not reported that surfaces later, bribery charges. Then they have to pay it back to the government. Tangible objects (watches, jewelry) have to be turned in to a forfeiture office. Travel and entertainment are charged at a fixed rate (probably the max value the Government will pay for meals and travel to senior executives, so a trip on a private jet only means a first class fare). Allow easy repayments, with interest at the IRS late payment rate. That's about the right level of pressure.
israelrt 12d ago
In the 2026 Transparency International ranking of corruption, the U.S. sits behind nations such as Uruguay, Lithuania, and the United Arab Emirates.
- sajithdilshan 12d ago
  That doesn't mean anything. All those countries are quite small compared to US in every aspect. If you want to compare then pick a country as big as size and population like US.
klntsky 12d ago
My impression is that americans got only those types of corruption most people can't benefit from personally (like skipping fines, getting some minor government benefits, local permits, getting legal work processed faster, etc). For most of them it's just on the TV and on the social media.
padjo 12d ago
I mean the Supreme Court made bribery legal in Snyder so it's hard to imagine why anyone would think corruption isn't rampant.
dandanua 12d ago
I wouldn't call it corruption when the richest man decides how the government's money should be spent. He is not an official, after all. I would call it a dead democratic system. EOL.
seydor 12d ago
They should also have asked them if they believe corruption is bad.
28304283409234 12d ago
“Drain the swamp”, indeed.
jauntywundrkind 12d ago
It's also worth noting that one specific party and their very special media has been trumpeting Fraud Abuse Waste as if it's a real thing, on and on. There is a deliberate propaganda campaign that has been going on to convince people that there always has been rank corruption problems festering away, doing incredible harm. DOGE was going to save us billions, perhaps even 0.2-0.4% of the 7T budget. Incredible! It was of course a sham, has found incredibly little, and was just a political chainsaw The Purge night. But that vocabulary is back again, has been faking the rounds once again, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson using it quite a lot again. A huge part is that this is projection, sure. That these corrupt people are doing the time honored tactic: accuse the other guy of exactly what you are doing. But also, we should take seriously the other upside for them/downside for the world: that terrormongering, telling us we are under attack, making us believe in a callous entropic world of horrors where everything is out to get us just makes us spiritually weak. That having no belief in anything, that undermining our spirit: that makes it much easier to loot and plunder the nation, and to keep quietly lobbying to bend all the rules to suit their amassed wealth. Reminder again: in Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century he doesn't argue we should tax rich people through the nose to raise revenue. He says it's vital because otherwise unchecked wealth translates itself to media power, political power, that it becomes an ever larger ever more lopsided threat against democracy, and that we must take the rich to keep a democracy. The story telling here, that corruption is rank, often comes from the most corrupt, and weirdly, if delivered broadly, the risk is it yet again helps them, creates a disbelief in governance broadly, that prevents people from striving and hoping for better.
yanhangyhy 12d ago
Its not only the us people. It also change the pro-us or pro-west people's view from countries like china. Before Trump, people still believe USA is a great country even with so many flaws. Its still has a good reputation.Trump changed everything. He is not a bad leader, he has thoughts, but he cannot implement them with caution. And he destroyed USA's reputation, maybe forever. Its hard to imaginy the greatest democracy' country, the president is manipulate the stock market, publicly, humiliating his friends country, or vaseel state. When the pro-USA people in china talks how great the USA is and China shoud learn from it, the comments is no longer agree anymore, most of them are mocking.and thats what the younger generation will grow up with, the mindset is: yes china is not perfect, but its way better than the shit countries like USA. You can see the change in the numbers of graduates return to china after college, its used to be low, not its near or >90%.
deleted 12d ago
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NoImmatureAdHom 12d ago
!!!THIS IS NOT A MEASURE OF CORRUPTION!!! This is a measure of perceptions of corruption. Among regular Americans who have little to no first-hand information about it. While there may be some correlation between this measure and corruption, Gallup doesn't show that. It's mostly a measure of what's in the news cycle. ITT: people playing right in to Gallup's hands.
0xbadcafebee 12d ago
As a reminder: the government is made up by... the people. If the government is corrupt, the people are corrupt
znnajdla 12d ago
We are seeing the decline and fall of an empire in realtime, it's just the cycle of life, nothing lasts forever. It's one of the reasons why I decided to do my own thing and build my own small bootstrapped startup outside of the West, and am much happier than being a part of something much bigger which is clearly in decline.
dwoldrich 12d ago
I love the compartmentalization people can do when it comes to corruption. Willfully blind to "my team", the propaganda is so thick. Life will get interesting when 89% of people learn about the regular corruption in elections and the rehypothication of stocks.
deleted 12d ago
[deleted]
Izmaki 12d ago
"Are you tired of winning, yet?"
crudgen 12d ago
Open corruption is not like Open Source, where you can see everything, it just adds to the non-obvious publicly hidden corruption.
- fireflash38 12d ago
  It makes it more accepted, because if everyone is doing it why wouldn't I do it?
sajithdilshan 12d ago
> Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89% of U.S The important keyword is "perception". It's not a measure or backed by any facts. People can have various opinions and due to the extreme polarized influence by the media democrats might think that Trump's government is the most corrupt ever and republicans believe otherwise. The headline might as well be Record-High 89% in U.S says Santa Clause is not real.
TacticalCoder 12d ago
89% only think that? Wanna talk about the enrichment of US politicans? Not just the Trump and the Pelosi but also a serious discussion about the net worth of, say, the Obama, Ilhan Omar and Kamala Harris, etc.? And the argument: "But they only made millions, while Trump made billions" ain't a valid one. It's not "better" if you only manage to steal less: you're still a thief. A less successful thief, but still just a petty thief.
- FireBeyond 12d ago
  Careful, your partisanship is showing. Telling that you don't mention Rick Scott, Elaine Chao, Kushner, Wilbur Ross, Tom Price, George Santos, Duncan Hunter, MTG, Mike Kelly, Kelly Loeffler, Chris Collins... but instead hand wave away Trump and say "but look at all these Democratic thieves who are thieves but less successful ones". And uh, going to need a citation on what exact thievery you're referring to with, say, Obama, whose net worth comes from two book deals after his Presidency for his memoirs, unless you're seriously claiming that Penguin Random House offering advances on what turned out to be best sellers or a Netflix deal is akin to a revolving door to consultancy, let alone the theft you're actually accusing him of here. Meanwhile, all the names I mentioned were people who did commit actual crimes or were believed to have done so (by the DOJ) but either "didn't press charges" after influence from the current administration, were charged, or were convicted and then pardoned or commuted again by the current administration. But no, let's talk about the Dems.
- yubblegum 12d ago
  I was looking at the picture in Reuters of Putin meeting Jared Kushner and my thoughts were that our government is no longer a government of the people for the people but oligarchs for their creepy spawn. Also this Red-Blue nonsense is wearing thin. It's really a spectrum of corruption at this point.
garte 12d ago
What I'm wondering these last few years is whether American "politics" has anything actually political to discuss like ensuring the pension system is still intact in 30 years, improving access to a solid education (and even more so: what does that mean?), drug prevention, transparent election processes, tax and debt management... Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI ... stuff that you could bicker over after all the actual politics were decided upon. Is there actual politics? Or is it all for show? (This is relevant to corruption because I think a populace is a lot more receptive to ignoring corruption if the politics is emotionalised and people are entrenched and you don't talk about stuff that actually would benefit you but you have to decide on how to act on it)
- petcat 12d ago
  Yes, there is a lot of "actual politics". For instance, the Protect College Sports Act is currently being intensely debated. It centers on the idea of amateurism in college athletics and what that means for things like college football and the Olympic sports. Americans love dominating the world at the Olympics every few years and that's because of the NCAA and college athletes, so people care about it. > Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI This is because Europe, and everyone else in the western world, is obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.
  - maxerickson 12d ago
    Protect College Sports Act not even on the radar for most people. It's wild that a law that is more or less transparently about limiting player pay for their participation in a blatantly commercial activity gets cheered on by "fans".
    - petcat 12d ago
      It's clear that you don't even know what the act is about since it has very little to do with paying players. That has already been explicitly allowed. It's about the prevention of forming mega conferences and funneling all the money and talent to the top. Judging from your response, if you actually knew what the PCSA was you would probably support it.
mrobot 12d ago
they let yall count them up?
silexia 11d ago
I have been fighting a bureaucrat who retaliated against me publicly. It has crystal clear evidence but nothing has been done. It is impossible to fire an single government bureaucrat, much less reduce budget for an agency.

589 points by karakoram 13d ago

econ 8d ago

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/pentagon-never-audited-astonishing-military-spending https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/pentag... >The result is an astounding $10tn in taxpayer money that has gone unaccounted for since 1996. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-go... >While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015. The report by Dr. Skidmore is easy to find. https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/ https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-su...

java-man 13d ago

Who are these 11%?

slater 13d ago
The ones smiling and holding "their" ladders
- actionfromafar 12d ago
  And the ones who believes Mr Trump drained the swamp.
  - slater 12d ago
    [they-are-the-same-picture-dot-gif]
dmix 12d ago
Government workers
bigstrat2003 12d ago
I wasn't surveyed but I would be part of that group. I believe the government has been corrupt for as long as I've been alive, if not longer. I also believe that it is not actually worse now than in the past. And contrary to what many uncharitable people in this thread claim, I am equally unhappy no matter which party backs the crooks in power. I just want a government that serves me, and I haven't had that in my 41 years on this earth.

Webstir 13d ago

But, not the politicians I voted for. It's always the other guys.

fhdkweig 12d ago
That would have been a more interesting question to ask. It's a shame they didn't.
newAccount2025 12d ago
Nah. At the end of the day it’s candidate A vs. B. Once they’re all corrupt you still have to decide between them and pick the lesser evil as you see it. They’re creatures of ambition and incentives, and the corruption is a feature of the system. It sucks but what can you do but vote for the corrupt dems or the corrupt republicans?
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- bigstrat2003 12d ago
  > It sucks but what can you do but vote for the corrupt dems or the corrupt republicans? Vote for a third party, or don't vote at all. Casting a vote for someone you don't actually want in office ("the lesser of two evils") is negligent.
  - amanaplanacanal 12d ago
    The reality is one of those two people is going to get elected. Your vote for Mickey Mouse isn't going to affect the outcome. Of course most elections aren't close enough for your vote to matter at all.
cucumber3732842 12d ago
This is tautologically true for everyone all the time because most of the government is unelected.

swed420 13d ago

Related: New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents (January 12, 2026) https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-political-independents.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

trentor 13d ago
Right on track to be the next Russia. Ironic but also incredibly funny.
- FpUser 13d ago
  He who kills the dragon becomes one.
jeffbee 12d ago
An "independent" in America is a person who greatly desires everything Trump is doing but realizes that makes them a bad person and therefore refuses to admit it.
- the_gastropod 12d ago
  I know you’re going to get downvoted to hell, but you’re pretty much spot on. There’s something strangely desirable about being seen as the edgy contrarian “not left, not right” person. But 9 times out of 10, that person has approximately the same incoherent worldview most Trumpists have.
  - bigstrat2003 12d ago
    He's not spot on at all, and that's why he's being downvoted. He's examining the world through a false dichotomy of "if you aren't on my side, you support my enemies". But the reality is that most people who consider themselves independent are actually independent and vote for whomever they consider to be the best candidate.
    - 12d ago

add-sub-mul-div 13d ago

I thought electing an outsider with theretofore no experience nor interest in governing was supposed to break the system in a good way so as to erase the incumbent problems and rebuild with common sense and integrity.

autoexec 12d ago
Giving someone without common sense and integrity unchecked power is probably not a good way to obtain common sense and integrity in your government.
netsharc 12d ago
Well, that reads like the justification you want to give to yourself after the fact.. the interesting question is what's the real reason...
vannevar 12d ago
The problem with government was that wealthy charlatans were rigging the system in their own favor. Naturally, the solution was to put a wealthy charlatan in charge of the whole thing and eliminate the middle man.

autoexec 13d ago

Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently. I don't think it's a good thing. It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks, which suggests that they believe they no longer have to be. That's not a healthy sign for what's supposed to be a democracy.

iAMkenough 12d ago
Sucks seeing the federal government weaponize the U.S. Postal Service to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted.
- BLKNSLVR 12d ago
  Also gives an idea as to how desperate and paranoid they are.
- vkou 12d ago
  What would anyone expect to happen when people are stupid enough to elect someone who tried, with multiple parallel methods, including an attack on Congress, to steal one election already.
- mrtesthah 12d ago
  It doesn't just "suck" -- it's a path to dictatorship that threatens the freedoms and lives of its citizens.
  - iAMkenough 12d ago
    It's not a path, it's a result. That sucks.
- imthatsteve 12d ago
  Okay so now that everyone has been shown how they can cheat the election with mail in ballots. How do you propose to stop the republicans from using mail in ballots to steal the next election? Since clearly you cant use the feds to weaponize the post office. How do the democrats secure an election? Do you just make sure you stuff the box with more mail in ballots than the other guy? You already made it illegal to show id when casting a ballot so if the republicans want to play the same game as the democrats how do you stop em? Do you just claim that its okay when we do it?

tekla 12d ago

Note the numbers between 2010 and 2025 were in the 72% to 79% range if you read the article. So numbers have not actually increased that much.

ProfessorLayton 12d ago
2010 was right after the great recession, and after the people that caused it got bailed out by the government.
- mswphd 12d ago
  2010 is also Citizen's United.
lynndotpy 12d ago
Think about it as 25% who disagree to only 11. Less than half of the people who thought corruption is not widespread still think so. Further, the US is now the #1 ranked country in corruption. I think it's more useful to think about the closed operations on the 0% to 100% range. A change of ~75% to 89% does not seem like much, but "only an 18% increase" is not a closed operation, so it's not so meaningful. You'll see this in machine learning, e.g. 70% accuracy to 75% accuracy is not as impressive as 98% to 99%, despite having a larger change.

throw0101a 12d ago

Even before this new record high, in the previous ~15 years the average seemed to be around 75% (±), which seems… high? I would perhaps understand the US public thinking that (some levels of) government being "incompetent", but not corrupt. By some measure the US does seem to have 'decent' scores for perception of corruption: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index * https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025 Meta: in some ways it seems that the public's perception of government is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the US there is a large vein of "government is bad/incompetent/corrupt" and that's apparently what the US often gets. While in (e.g.) Scandinavian countries there appears to be a higher level of trust in government, and the people there tend to elect more competent politicians (?).

wat10000 12d ago
I'd guess it comes down to what counts as "the government." Millions of people work for the federal government, and millions more for state and local governments. Is there widespread corruption among them? I don't think so. And I don't think my countrymen think so either. But "the government" is often meant as just the very top. The President is corrupt. Big swathes of Congress are corrupt. We have a Supreme Court justice more or less openly accepting bribes. Among that small group, I would be comfortable saying that corruption is widespread.
- mswphd 12d ago
  I (and I'm sure others) would obviously agree. just a smattering of the obvious cases * for years people have noticed that many members of congress use privileged information to pick stocks. * lobbying post-Citizen's United has a very decidedly "buying politicians" aspect to it * a congressman (Menendez) was literally arrested while holding gold bars from a foreign government. he went to prison, but is the only person on this list who has iirc. * the former mayor of new york (a long-time police offer) was embroiled in a Very Funny, very obviously true corruption scandal for turkish airline tickets. the prosecution against him was dropped for no good reason.
- 12d ago

surfmike 12d ago

The most blatant recent case is Trump selling early access to his Truth Social posts https://abcnews.com/Politics/profoundly-corrupt-trump-sued-federal-court-selling-early/story?id=135591214 https://abcnews.com/Politics/profoundly-corrupt-trump-sued-f...

layla5alive 12d ago

Much of the 11% who say it isn't are in on the corruption!

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 12d ago

If this is the question they asked: Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not? Then that's very open to interpretation. Even if I thought the federal government was not corrupt, but I did think the local or state government was corrupt (or many local governments were, not just my own), I'd answer yes to this question. They should have broken it down a bit more.

xnx 12d ago

"Drain the swamp". Everything is projection. What they say about the Democrats is what they are or aspire to be.

etchalon 12d ago
I wonder if it's less projection than permission. They believe that all government is corrupt and thus they're not doing anything wrong by being openly corrupt.
- Loughla 12d ago
  I don't know why you're being down voted. Your statement does seem to be the literal truth.
- ozozozd 12d ago
  I agree. Though it’s a bit of a self-serving belief, rather than a genuine belief.

jghn 12d ago

Unfortunately if one asks "who is the cause of the corruption" you'd see two very strong modes in the data, and therein lies the issue regarding fixing things.

pseudosavant 12d ago

Looking at their charts, Democrats and Independents clearly think corruption is up a lot since 2024. But Republicans think corruption is down from 2024. The polarization of the electorate in the U.S. is pretty incredible.

deleted 12d ago
[deleted]
BLKNSLVR 12d ago
Their corruption is bad. (Ie. the other party) I wonder if the split would still be roughly the same if a Democrat was in power at the time of the survey. Edited to add: Answer seems to be in the article, as pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571258 First diagram in the article shows uptick, but since 2010 it's been in the 70-80% range. So it seems pretty party-agnostic.
- xirdstl 12d ago
  Biden was in power for the survey in 2024.
- paisawalla 12d ago
  Per the second chart: Since 2024, Democrats went from being the most trusting (57%) to the most skeptical (91%), bringing all groups to within 10 points of each other on the question. This is not a "both sides" situation: Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics. There is no universal implication here IMO, this is just Democrats joining the 80-percenters, i.e. everyone
  - vannevar 12d ago
    >...Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics. This is not surprising; a big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years. No real evidence of that was ever uncovered, but it didn't stop Fox News and every Republican leader from constantly referring to the accusations as if they were true. One the other hand, Trump is openly accepting huge payments from foreign governments, and never even bothered to separate himself from his companies. Republicans were at 87% due to general distrust of government and the rumor of phantom corruption, while Democrats (who tend to be more trusting of government) rose to the same level only on clear evidence of real corruption. The authors don't break it out by parties, but the overall level during Trump's first term is about the same as Biden's. Since the article notes that Republican skepticism is higher in general and more consistent, this implies that Democrats' perception of corruption is much higher in Trump's second term than his first. Which makes sense, the Republican leadership was much more responsible in applying guardrails in the first term than the second. Trump is getting away with a LOT more in his second term.

amazingamazing 12d ago

> Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not? How is corruption defined for the purposes of this survey? If there is none (I assume there is not), then it is only natural this number go up as the media highlights and propagandizes and highlights all actions taken by all government officials.

sublinear 12d ago

I'm curious how these polls are conducted. These polls are at least already biased since people self-select. If they're online only, even moreso. If they're only advertised to echo chambers, even moreso. Anyway, the result may be that the polls are only measuring younger people with nothing better to do. That's interesting but only a record high amongst that subpopulation. I'm fairly certain this is business as usual.

ksudb 12d ago

[dead]

deleted 12d ago

[deleted]

chris_wot 12d ago

I’m not an American. Those not American are frankly gobsmacked that U.S. citizens voted the current President in a second time. You all literally saw what he did in his first term!

chronc7403 12d ago
> You all literally saw what he did in his first term! Yeah, he stopped US military from defending other countries for free. Soft power doesn’t pay your rent/mortgage.
- techblueberry 12d ago
  Soft power is _literally_ what pays your rent and mortgage.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 12d ago
    Switzerland has much more soft power than the US, due to Switzerland avoiding military entanglements.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 12d ago
  [flagged]
  - slater 12d ago
    From that very same link: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 12d ago
      Vote however you want, but I'm sick of people abusing the flag feature.
      - shusaku 12d ago

lovich 12d ago

I don’t know why this should be surprising since it’s all out in the open now. They made Carter give up his family peanut farm to be President. Trump and his family are selling stock every week, running crypto currency rug pulls, accepting gifts ostensibly for the country that they say will be donated to Trump at the end of his term(the Qatar plane). It’s all out in the open under Trump term 2. At this point if you think there isn’t corruption I assume you also think RFK has the right idea about health care and vaccinations.

insane_dreamer 12d ago
yet Republicans think corruption is _down_ since 2024 :smacks-head:

mberning 12d ago

The corruption is bad enough at the local level. I can’t even fathom how much theft is going on at the state and federal level. It’s one of the more frustrating things to see how much money you are paying into the system for such meager benefits. We can’t even get sidewalks installed in my area, but the township can certainly give a sweetheart tax break to one of their buddies to build a new gas station.

jimt1234 12d ago

Citizens United. Nothing else to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

hackernud3s 12d ago
Citizens United is widely considered the event that would cause US corruption to spiral out of control, but there was always the hope that a constitutional amendment could get us out of this. Neither side ever even attempted it. Every once in a while you get some lip service about small money donations but nobody ever tried to go after the problem at the root in all this time. Think about what that means.
asdff 12d ago
Some local governments are fully designed to be perfect vehicles for corruption by this point. The incentives just lead to it over time as one corrupt prick makes things a little easier for themselves and their ilk to operate without oversight. Things compound over the decades of people drawn to the graft opportunities in local government with their campaigns funded by the beneficiaries of the graft, against little to no opposition.
- FireBeyond 12d ago
  Absolutely. In my town the politicians on the planning and zoning committees are all best friends with all the developers in town, and not just "we work in the same area, socialize at the same events", but "we go on joint family vacations with our kids together and are in each other's bridal parties"... ... and then wonder why the public gets mad when the environmental impact study says "not good", public works says "area roads can't support the traffic influx and can't support increasing capacity due to geography and existing homes" and still approve the developer's new project anyway.

giantg2 12d ago

Lots of people here are focused on one guy. But the the article says "widespread". In my experience, much of the corruption is at a local or state level. At the federal level it seems the corruption is mostly related to agencies (GAO reports) and lobbying.

vannevar 12d ago
It doesn't seem like they asked about specific levels or branches of government, so presumably the respondents were giving a general impression. And in that case, it's hard to believe that a corrupt President wouldn't strongly influence the response.
- giantg2 12d ago
  It's only 17% higher than in 2010. Seems like a majority believed the government was corrupt prior to Trump.
0ckpuppet 12d ago
usaid gec ngo all federal all exist to facilitate corruption
- muwtyhg 12d ago
  What do you think NGO stands for?
fittingopposite 12d ago
A fish rots from the head down

trashface 12d ago

The disparity between Trump and previous presidents on income earned while president is so vast, you need a log scale graph to make it meaningful. Your favorite LLM can generate it for you (except maybe grok, I presume)

jmyeet 12d ago

In many countries around the world, corruption is a huge problem. But pretty much everywhere it happens there's a surface-level denial or attempt to hide it. If you're Putin or Erdogan, for example, you'll have children who get beneficial contracts and there's layers of obfuscation. So there are three things that are scary about Trump's corruption: 1. It's so brazen and on a scale rarely seen. Apparently he's made $2 billion since coming back into office and he does so openly. Pardons are for sale. Truth Social has a feature to pay to get early access to posts to trade on, basically. There are crypto rug pulls. The list goes on; 2. A third of the population simply doesn't care and will defend it no matter what; and 3. He'll never be held accountable by any future administration. This is the worst part. If this happened in China, he'd go to prison and his assets would be seized. This would extend to his family and their assets. Just look at Hui Ya Kan [1]. The US just does not punish the wealthy. Look at the Sacklers and Purdue. There's clear evidence they hid the fact that Oxycontin was addictive despite their public claims and they have a large amount of responsibility for the opioid crisis. In a just world, they would all die penniless in 6x8 foot grey prison cells. And who went to prison for the 2008 subprime crisis? Oh, that's right. Nobody. This also extends to the powerful. George W. Bush had an illegal torture program. Who went to prison for it? Only 1 guy: the whistleblower John Kiriakou for talking about it. The Supreme Court is utterly corrupt. Anthony Kennedy allegedly traded his retirement for a job for his son. John Roberts's wife makes tens of millions in headhunting fees for finding lawyers to argue before teh Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is just one bribe after another. The entire government is captured by people who want to get rich by betraying their country to the ultra-wealthy. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-evergrande-founder-sentenced-life-imprisonment-cctv-reports-2026-08-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-evergrande-founder...

stinkbeetle 12d ago

I remember when this used to be a far right conspiracy theory.

tstrimple 12d ago
The far right won office and made it manifest. Just like they complain on government inefficiency and that it can never accomplish anything while explicitly making those things worse while in power to prove their point.
- stinkbeetle 12d ago
  Yes possibly so I'd have to see the evidence for that, but my point is it's great that such a large majority of people are now well aware of the horrific and disgusting corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence in governments.
  - atmavatar 12d ago
    For some quick and easy evidence, you could look at the history of the Post Office. USPS has always been the poster child for efficient and effective government agencies. Despite claims otherwise, the agency still manages to deliver letters and other postage to areas private industry like FedEx, UPS, et. al. would never touch. Unfortunately, over the years, Republican Congresses and Presidents have repeatedly attempted to sabotage the agency. Some recent(-ish) examples: * The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required USPS to create a fund to pay the cost of post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future. * The Republican-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy overseeing the removal of 711 sorting machines as well as a number of public mailboxes in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which, due to Covid, was expected to have larger-than-normal use of mail-in ballots. Not only did it cause significant concern regarding mail-in ballots, but it also resulted in significant delays and backlogs in general mail delivery.
    - stinkbeetle 12d ago
      Oh no, I don't need evidence that governments are dirty hives of corrupt incompetent criminals, leeches, and parasites.

MBCook 12d ago

I would be really interested in a much, much longer timescale version of the graph. Like 50 to 100 years.

CyberDildonics 12d ago

Interesting that so far I don't see any comments about the epstein files and half of them not being released even under congressional order, let alone congress now being recessed for two weeks to avoid another vote for a second eptein transparency act.

chr15m 12d ago

Most democracy measurement projects and indices have shown a decline in democratic performance for the US over the past decade. EIU reclassified the country from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy" in 2016. V-Dem went from "liberal democracy" to "electoral democracy" in 2025. When you have a wide variety of entities measuring the same trend, it is probably broadly correct. The hope the good citizenry find a fix. [To be fair the trend is global unfortunately: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/countries-democracies-autocracies-row https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/countries-democracies-aut...]

dozerly 12d ago
The US’s democracy has been under fire from foreign nations and corporations for years. It has slowly degraded because of it. What we’re seeing now is the “all at once” portion.
- baxtr 12d ago
  It started on 9/11. I find it sad that those terrorist might can get what aimed for after all.
  - aprilthird2021 12d ago
    They got it when the PATRIOT ACT was passed. That was the proof that all our rights and liberties are conditional, and Trump uses the revelation of that back then to pull off everything he is doing now
    - Arodex 12d ago
      I would think the bailouts after the 2007 financial crisis destroyed more trust and lives than 9/11 and the Patriot Act.
      - aprilthird2021 12d ago
        If so, another terrible decision by our voting populace

rush86999 12d ago

It's like everyone knows the dirty truth, but no one wants to do anything about it. Why? Self-interest has made everyone blind to open corruption. The worst part is reality hits 3-4 years later, and the big guy is already out and about. Already with his billions, partying in the Caymans. Welcome to democratic oligarchy!!

fifticon 12d ago
The worse part is whatever competent hoodlums will arrive after him, to enjoy the gates he has crashed

52-hertz_whale 12d ago

4 year smash and grab. Foxes are in the henhouse.

worik 12d ago

So that is 11% who do not read the news, do not know what corruption is or are benefiting

HeDoesntKnow 12d ago

[flagged]

snark_attack 12d ago

[dead]

khriss 12d ago

Unfortunately, decades of media conditioning and extreme polarization has led to a situation in which the normal checks and balances have been severely degraded or are non functional. A significant fraction of the population is happy to overlook excesses from 'their' side. Combine that with extreme gerrymandering and you have the recipe for a situation where a majority of elected lawmakers have no real fear of an election loss. We have a situation where the same people who were apoplectic about Hunter Biden's laptop are whistling past things like the pardon of George Santos and the Binance founder(with Trump admitting he didn't who CZ was). There is no easy path back from this situation. Democracies that have reached this stage of late have struggled to come back.

jens_tlb 12d ago

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kstenerud 12d ago

What I find fascinating about this is how the American commenters are eating their own, Democrats blaming Republicans, Republicans blaming Democrats, both spinning conspiracy yarns about "the other side" as well as independents ("the other side in disguise"), and generally treating each other like "the enemy". Some other interesting tidbits: - In America, perception of government corruption has consistently held about 11% higher than the perception of corruption in business. Even with the massive uptick of both since 2024, they've remained a similar relative distance apart. - Since 2023, only four countries out of the 132 in which Gallup has posed this question annually have scored nominally above the 89% recorded in the U.S. this year: Lebanon in 2024 (92%), Peru in 2025 (92%), and Ghana and Nigeria in 2024 (both 90%).

Animats 12d ago

This has to stop. Ask candidates how tough they're willing to get on corruption. A good starting point for the next administration is to offer an amnesty on criminal prosecution to government employees who report anything of value they received outside their employment during the previous administration. If it's reported, they're safe from criminal prosecution. Anything that's not reported that surfaces later, bribery charges. Then they have to pay it back to the government. Tangible objects (watches, jewelry) have to be turned in to a forfeiture office. Travel and entertainment are charged at a fixed rate (probably the max value the Government will pay for meals and travel to senior executives, so a trip on a private jet only means a first class fare). Allow easy repayments, with interest at the IRS late payment rate. That's about the right level of pressure.

israelrt 12d ago

In the 2026 Transparency International ranking of corruption, the U.S. sits behind nations such as Uruguay, Lithuania, and the United Arab Emirates.

sajithdilshan 12d ago
That doesn't mean anything. All those countries are quite small compared to US in every aspect. If you want to compare then pick a country as big as size and population like US.

klntsky 12d ago

My impression is that americans got only those types of corruption most people can't benefit from personally (like skipping fines, getting some minor government benefits, local permits, getting legal work processed faster, etc). For most of them it's just on the TV and on the social media.

padjo 12d ago

I mean the Supreme Court made bribery legal in Snyder so it's hard to imagine why anyone would think corruption isn't rampant.

dandanua 12d ago

I wouldn't call it corruption when the richest man decides how the government's money should be spent. He is not an official, after all. I would call it a dead democratic system. EOL.

seydor 12d ago

They should also have asked them if they believe corruption is bad.

28304283409234 12d ago

“Drain the swamp”, indeed.

jauntywundrkind 12d ago

It's also worth noting that one specific party and their very special media has been trumpeting Fraud Abuse Waste as if it's a real thing, on and on. There is a deliberate propaganda campaign that has been going on to convince people that there always has been rank corruption problems festering away, doing incredible harm. DOGE was going to save us billions, perhaps even 0.2-0.4% of the 7T budget. Incredible! It was of course a sham, has found incredibly little, and was just a political chainsaw The Purge night. But that vocabulary is back again, has been faking the rounds once again, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson using it quite a lot again. A huge part is that this is projection, sure. That these corrupt people are doing the time honored tactic: accuse the other guy of exactly what you are doing. But also, we should take seriously the other upside for them/downside for the world: that terrormongering, telling us we are under attack, making us believe in a callous entropic world of horrors where everything is out to get us just makes us spiritually weak. That having no belief in anything, that undermining our spirit: that makes it much easier to loot and plunder the nation, and to keep quietly lobbying to bend all the rules to suit their amassed wealth. Reminder again: in Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century he doesn't argue we should tax rich people through the nose to raise revenue. He says it's vital because otherwise unchecked wealth translates itself to media power, political power, that it becomes an ever larger ever more lopsided threat against democracy, and that we must take the rich to keep a democracy. The story telling here, that corruption is rank, often comes from the most corrupt, and weirdly, if delivered broadly, the risk is it yet again helps them, creates a disbelief in governance broadly, that prevents people from striving and hoping for better.

yanhangyhy 12d ago

Its not only the us people. It also change the pro-us or pro-west people's view from countries like china. Before Trump, people still believe USA is a great country even with so many flaws. Its still has a good reputation.Trump changed everything. He is not a bad leader, he has thoughts, but he cannot implement them with caution. And he destroyed USA's reputation, maybe forever. Its hard to imaginy the greatest democracy' country, the president is manipulate the stock market, publicly, humiliating his friends country, or vaseel state. When the pro-USA people in china talks how great the USA is and China shoud learn from it, the comments is no longer agree anymore, most of them are mocking.and thats what the younger generation will grow up with, the mindset is: yes china is not perfect, but its way better than the shit countries like USA. You can see the change in the numbers of graduates return to china after college, its used to be low, not its near or >90%.

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NoImmatureAdHom 12d ago

!!!THIS IS NOT A MEASURE OF CORRUPTION!!! This is a measure of perceptions of corruption. Among regular Americans who have little to no first-hand information about it. While there may be some correlation between this measure and corruption, Gallup doesn't show that. It's mostly a measure of what's in the news cycle. ITT: people playing right in to Gallup's hands.

0xbadcafebee 12d ago

As a reminder: the government is made up by... the people. If the government is corrupt, the people are corrupt

znnajdla 12d ago

We are seeing the decline and fall of an empire in realtime, it's just the cycle of life, nothing lasts forever. It's one of the reasons why I decided to do my own thing and build my own small bootstrapped startup outside of the West, and am much happier than being a part of something much bigger which is clearly in decline.

dwoldrich 12d ago

I love the compartmentalization people can do when it comes to corruption. Willfully blind to "my team", the propaganda is so thick. Life will get interesting when 89% of people learn about the regular corruption in elections and the rehypothication of stocks.

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Izmaki 12d ago

"Are you tired of winning, yet?"

crudgen 12d ago

Open corruption is not like Open Source, where you can see everything, it just adds to the non-obvious publicly hidden corruption.

fireflash38 12d ago
It makes it more accepted, because if everyone is doing it why wouldn't I do it?

sajithdilshan 12d ago

> Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89% of U.S The important keyword is "perception". It's not a measure or backed by any facts. People can have various opinions and due to the extreme polarized influence by the media democrats might think that Trump's government is the most corrupt ever and republicans believe otherwise. The headline might as well be Record-High 89% in U.S says Santa Clause is not real.

TacticalCoder 12d ago

89% only think that? Wanna talk about the enrichment of US politicans? Not just the Trump and the Pelosi but also a serious discussion about the net worth of, say, the Obama, Ilhan Omar and Kamala Harris, etc.? And the argument: "But they only made millions, while Trump made billions" ain't a valid one. It's not "better" if you only manage to steal less: you're still a thief. A less successful thief, but still just a petty thief.

FireBeyond 12d ago
Careful, your partisanship is showing. Telling that you don't mention Rick Scott, Elaine Chao, Kushner, Wilbur Ross, Tom Price, George Santos, Duncan Hunter, MTG, Mike Kelly, Kelly Loeffler, Chris Collins... but instead hand wave away Trump and say "but look at all these Democratic thieves who are thieves but less successful ones". And uh, going to need a citation on what exact thievery you're referring to with, say, Obama, whose net worth comes from two book deals after his Presidency for his memoirs, unless you're seriously claiming that Penguin Random House offering advances on what turned out to be best sellers or a Netflix deal is akin to a revolving door to consultancy, let alone the theft you're actually accusing him of here. Meanwhile, all the names I mentioned were people who did commit actual crimes or were believed to have done so (by the DOJ) but either "didn't press charges" after influence from the current administration, were charged, or were convicted and then pardoned or commuted again by the current administration. But no, let's talk about the Dems.
yubblegum 12d ago
I was looking at the picture in Reuters of Putin meeting Jared Kushner and my thoughts were that our government is no longer a government of the people for the people but oligarchs for their creepy spawn. Also this Red-Blue nonsense is wearing thin. It's really a spectrum of corruption at this point.

garte 12d ago

What I'm wondering these last few years is whether American "politics" has anything actually political to discuss like ensuring the pension system is still intact in 30 years, improving access to a solid education (and even more so: what does that mean?), drug prevention, transparent election processes, tax and debt management... Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI ... stuff that you could bicker over after all the actual politics were decided upon. Is there actual politics? Or is it all for show? (This is relevant to corruption because I think a populace is a lot more receptive to ignoring corruption if the politics is emotionalised and people are entrenched and you don't talk about stuff that actually would benefit you but you have to decide on how to act on it)

petcat 12d ago
Yes, there is a lot of "actual politics". For instance, the Protect College Sports Act is currently being intensely debated. It centers on the idea of amateurism in college athletics and what that means for things like college football and the Olympic sports. Americans love dominating the world at the Olympics every few years and that's because of the NCAA and college athletes, so people care about it. > Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI This is because Europe, and everyone else in the western world, is obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.
- maxerickson 12d ago
  Protect College Sports Act not even on the radar for most people. It's wild that a law that is more or less transparently about limiting player pay for their participation in a blatantly commercial activity gets cheered on by "fans".
  - petcat 12d ago
    It's clear that you don't even know what the act is about since it has very little to do with paying players. That has already been explicitly allowed. It's about the prevention of forming mega conferences and funneling all the money and talent to the top. Judging from your response, if you actually knew what the PCSA was you would probably support it.

mrobot 12d ago

they let yall count them up?

silexia 11d ago

I have been fighting a bureaucrat who retaliated against me publicly. It has crystal clear evidence but nothing has been done. It is impossible to fire an single government bureaucrat, much less reduce budget for an agency.