How does corruption actually destroy countries, especially developing countries ?
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Let’s take a public school system funded by taxes as an example.
The point of the school system is to educate the people so they become more skilled and competent and will be able to do high skilled jobs which usually generate more money, which in turn gives more money to the country through taxes.
If the country is corrupt and individuals in position of power sneak (steal) money that is supposed to be invested in the school system into their own pockets, this means that the school system will not get enough funding. Overtime, this will hollow out the school system where more and more savings and cost reductions have to be made, and eventually the school system will be very lacking or may collapse entirely.
The effect of this is that the people don’t get educated, meaning they will be unable to gain competence and work high skilled jobs. For the country this means that you will have fewer companies driving innovation and competing on the global market, which in turn means the country will generate less money as a whole, which in turn means less money from taxes.
As a next step, maybe the healthcare will get affected by this as now there isn’t enough money in the school system left to steal, so now they start taking from the healthcare. This leads to the health of the people declining, meaning more and more people get sick and are unable to work as efficiently or for as long, which again results in loss of labour and in turn less money to the state via taxes.
And so the cycle continues to slowly hollow out the country. A hollow system is usually unstable, so with higher corruption you also have higher risk of civil wars, uprisings etc. because people are desperate and the government doesn’t provide or help them. So, instead people will form their own communities or groups to try to take care of themselves.
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