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- Hacker News
- > 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.
- Open corruption is not like Open Source, where you can see everything, it just adds to the non-obvious publicly hidden corruption.by crudgen
- It makes it more accepted, because if everyone is doing it why wouldn't I do it?by fireflash38
- 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.
- 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.by znnajdla
- In the 2026 Transparency International ranking of corruption, the U.S. sits behind nations such as Uruguay, Lithuania, and the United Arab Emirates.by israelrt
- 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.
- 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.by giantg2
- usaid gec ngo all federal all exist to facilitate corruptionby 0ckpuppet
- A fish rots from the head down
- 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.by vannevar
- Related:
New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents (January 12, 2026)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...
by swed420 - Two thirds of those independents will vote MAGA down the ballot to give him a third and fourth term.by vkou
- 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.by jeffbee
- Right on track to be the next Russia. Ironic but also incredibly funny.by trentor
- Identifying as independents means nothing. 67% of independents in 2018 viewed one party more favorable and were unfavorable to other. In other words, the independents have a partisan lean towards one party and are more likely to vote that way.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/03/14/political-in...
- 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://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 (?).
by throw0101a - This is what a steady diet of conservative, increasingly monopolistic, media does to a populace.by dfxm12
- I imagine having over a dozen political parties helps with this as well.by archonis
- 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.
by wat10000 - 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)
by garte - There arent any real politics by design. Most people in this country agree on most issues, those issues are the things that you will never hear or see mentioned by any party politician.
The parties only maintain their power by making you vote against your own interests they do this by playing parties off each other. They pick the most divisive topics they can and they run on that. They will run polls to learn what people disagree about the most, like abortion. Then they will run the entire election on abortion. So the democratic candidate says you get abortion up until the week after birth which is literal baby murder which no sane democrat actually supports but it enrages republicans and makes them want to vote against the dems so the reps run someone the exact opposite and run on banning abortion entirely which is mostly supported by the extremely religious. So now instead of voting on numbers and plans and policy your voting entirely on emotion and fear and you have to choose between killing babies and the handmaids tale.
Party politics is designed to force every election into these awful games of would you rather instead of thinking about options and then choosing the best one.
All we have to do is put country above political party but thats asking way too much of your average american who actually believes in all the silly scripted political theater nonsense. If your an american and you only blame one party then your not just part of the problem but the whole entire problem. Your the girl who always cries about her abusive ex but absolutely refuses to leave them.
And i get it i totally do, your party is very good at saying exactly what you want to hear and when they tell you next time will be different you really want to believe. When they blame the other party you really want to believe and give them another chance.
Maybe your party actually does some things that you like. I just dont think its worth selling out the entire country for the crumbs they toss out.
by imthatsteve - > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
> The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
by andai - 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.
by petcat - It doesn't event attempt to address any of those issues or anything real. American politics is all about keeping the working class distracted and pointing fingers at each other while the ownership class rapes (literally) and pillages.by m4ck_
- 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-aut...]
by chr15m - 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.by dozerly
- 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.by pseudosavant
- Average person believe what they see and hear.
Each group is exposed to different media, thus the polarization.
Current administration knows this very well
by jameson - Oligarchy has completely subverted democracy in the US.
In this era, venal actions are official actions. Nothing is even hidden anymore. Racketeering and thuggery are on display even during supposed negotiations.
The US is under mob rule. Sure sure, we gonna make a deal. Da best deal evah. Da deal is dat we won't whack ya.