Rich Country Corruption

Mark Weisbrot, an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writes:

Corruption takes many forms in different countries and locations. Here in
the United States it may not be as common to pay off a judge or a customs
official as it is in most low and middle income countries, but we do have quite
a bit of legalized bribery, especially in the form of electoral campaign
contributions. The most obvious current case is that of health care reform,
where the powerful insurance, pharmaceutical and other lobbies are in the
process of vetoing some of the most important parts of the health care reform
that most Americans want and need. For example, the vast majority of Americans
favor a public option – insurance offered by the government, as we have for
senior citizens in the Medicare program – yet these powerful interests are
blocking it in the Senate. This is despite the modest nature of the reform,
which would not provide free or universal insurance, but rather an additional
option that employers and individuals could buy into, with some subsidies for
those who could not afford it. The insurance companies don’t want competition,
and the pharmaceutical corporations don’t want another potentially large buyer
that could bargain against their own monopoly power over the prices of patented
drugs.

The United States is a rich country, so it seems obvious that our forms
of corruption are preferable to those that plague developing countries. And they
are, in the sense that it that it is always better to be a rich country and have
rich country problems than to be a poor or middle-income country. But if we look
at the United States from the point of view of its potential – and I don’t mean
utopian dreams but merely what is quite feasible and practical in the immediate
or near future – it seems that we have a very limited form of democracy.