Are you claiming Europe is not obviously corrupt? Or Latin America? Or Korea, or Japan? I can't speak to Australia or New Zealand, I suppose.

Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.

> Corruption is, of course, universal.

So is crime. But it's all about prevalence.

And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.

You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.

If you just look at e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Corruptio...

you will see that the spread is very wide, and China/India is significantly behind most western nations.

You are shifting the goalposts. You first said "at least they try to appear anti-corruption".

This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)

Europe is prosecuting the Epstein Pedos. Trump is protecting his friends

Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house