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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

Actually, among developed countries the US has a relatively high corruption level, I believe. (Insert many caveats about how difficult corruption is to measure.)

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America ranks 23rd on the Perception of Corruption Index. Australia, Canada and the UK are 12th, and New Zealand 1st. [1]

[1] https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi

How much did it pay for that privilege?

The name of this index is like clickbait gone awry... Couldn't they have gone for something more like the Perception of Integrity Index since being #1 means "least corrupt"?

I never thought about it that way, haha, good call-out.

One group that measures corruption (I'm sure there are many) is freedomhouse.org

They rate USA 3/4 for corruption (Section C2 [0])

Comparing other similar nations for corruption

Australia 4/4 Canada 4/4 New Zealand 4/4 United Kingdom 4/4

[0] https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world...

They rate USA 75% for corruption, and the (ex) British colonies as 100% for corruption. What does that mean? Is literally every single transaction in those places corrupt? "Out of 4" seems like a very poor way of doing this kind or rating.

Higher score is better. 4/4 is best.

Compare vs. China https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2020

You can't just turn ratings out of 4 or 5 or 10 into percents like that. It doesn't mean the same thing. So no they don't rate those countries that.

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