Thesis On Corruption And Poverty

Throughout history positions of power and wealth have been plagued by corruption, does this power cause people to be corrupt? Or is the power and wealth earned through immoral and corrupt practices? In order to find these answers, one must define what they feel is corrupt, for most corruption is the act of being dishonest or immoral with the motive of personal gains of money or power. There are numerous accounts of politicians, military leaders, business owners, entrepreneurs, and millionaires, all earning or using their power and wealth in an immoral and corrupt manner. Whether money is used for personal gain, used to corrupt others, or the wealth was earned by corrupt ways, it seems that the accumulation of wealth is constantly accompanied by corruption.

First, it is important to define what corruption is. The term, “corruption” covers a broad range of human actions,

"Corruption is an important cause of poverty because it promotes unfair distribution of income and inefficient use of resources." (The Link Between Corruption and Poverty) Americans enjoy a government that, although it has its flaws, looks out for its citizens and is geared for the benefit of the people as a whole. Leaders that are elected generally have the population's best interests at heart and fight for better lives for average Americans nationwide. Most countries in Africa do not have the luxury of such a government. The officials only care about themselves. They pocket a fair amount of the donated money and another significant portion is used for selfish projects that do not really benefit the country or the millions of poverty-stricken citizens. "The well-connected people don't have to pay the same taxes like everyone else; policemen and other junior officials seeking small bribes don't dare solicit cash from them. At the end of the day it is the poor and the weak who face the true brunt of corruption. This is a critical link between corruption and poverty." (The Link Between Corruption and Poverty) This also has an effect on the leaders that do have good intentions at heart. They have never been trained on how to be effective and they also, accidentally, use the money in many unhelpful ways. The money is squandered time and time again and the rest of the world does nothing but keep the supply of it coming. This is another area where something must

Corruption diverts resources from the poor to the rich . when politicians don't make decisions to benefit the public ,but rather themselves, this is a corruption .corruption by politicians or public officials is not just an envelope filled with money ,these people make

Thus, corruption proposes that since the government is spending money away from programs that could benefits more of the lower income individuals. For examples, the government couldn’t provide public goods like education and health that could help the low income individuals because of the tax system. Yet, the higher income individuals have access to resources that the lower incomes individual don’t have to evade taxes by bribing government officials to lean on their side known as lobbying (Dincer and Gunlap). This research shows that the higher income individuals have a better chance to bribe governments causing the gap in income inequality in the economy because they have the resources to do it.

Ultimately corruption takes away from the total resource pie, which essentially takes away from the common populace. When a nation’s resources are fraudulently diverted, societal development and progress suffer across the board. Accordingly, nongovernmental organizations such as Transparency International concur with this assessment and also depict corruption as an anti-poor mechanism. Hence, corruption feeds into the cycle of poverty in developing nations, leaving the majority of wealth for the elite minority, while the majority of the populace lives in abject poverty. In the end, corruption and poor governance, combined with an abundance of accessible and valuable resources throughout the region provide ample motive for the generation of a power grab.

The negative economic impacts of corruption have grown rapidly, and major international organizations have claimed that corruption hinders economic growth (world bank 2006). Although there are claims that corruption is harmful to economic growth, economists have not really agreed with the argument from a theoretical point of view. Theoretical studies suggest that corruption may counteract government failure and promote economic growth in the short run, given externally determined suboptimal bureaucratic rules and regulations. As government failure is itself a function of corruption, however, corruption should have

Before the 1990’s, the conventional belief was that corruption in developing countries was practically inevitable and in some cases even desirable. However, a more in-depth investigation into this issue suggests that bribery and corruption can cause significant problems for all parties involved. For example, for suppliers of bribes such as corporations, it can cause many uncertainties since the quality and the price of their products are not the only factors considered in the transaction (Hamra, 2000). Therefore, corporations are not usually

International Monetary Fund. 1998. Does Corruption Affect Income Inequality And Poverty?. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/wp9876.pdf. [Accessed 4 March 2017].

The first and foremost problem in dealing with corruption is trying to define the term. There is plenty of literature out that describes a general definition: Tilman (1970) first defined corruption as the result of the adoption of a market-pricing mechanism for government goods and services rather than a mandatory pricing model of allocation Shah (2007) broadly describes corruption as the exercise of official powers against public interest or the abuse of public office for private gains. Other authors delve deeper in their description of corruption as the illegal privatization of state property and the selling of state power by public officials. This often takes the form of creating private gain by said public officials through classic rent-seeking activities, which will be described in the next section (Vasavakul 2008; Gainsborough 2009; Bai 2013; Morris 1991; Lancaster 2001; Rock 2004; Rose-Ackerman 2000; Treisman 2000).

On any given day, if you were to tune into a news channel or browse the internet, there would be a good chance that a story of corruption would be uncovered. Corruption has been taking place since the beginning of time (literally). Some would say that is customary, and many would even argue that it is inevitable. In the book, ¬Global Corruption: Money, Power and Ethics in the Modern World, Laurence Cockcroft attempts to identify and educate others on the ethical (or unethical) dilemmas that many individuals, companies, and/or governments are facing throughout the world. Global Corruption provides the reader incredible insight into a wide array of instances of corruption. Mr. Cockcroft begins by giving the reader a brief overview of what defines corruption, along with several examples of corruption that has occurred throughout the globe. Then the author transitions into why corruption occurs by identifying the common drivers of unethical behavior, and concludes the book by offering some analysis on what measures need to be taken in order to fight global corruption.

Corruption and poverty goes hand in hand, while poverty causes corruption, corruption makes it worse. Corruption occurs when poverty in a country I in extreme conditions, and the citizens can’t take action in order to construct a proper form of government (Johnston N.P). When corruption happens, the government has no real benefits of running the country, and faces to more selfish needs for themselves.

Political corruption is parasitic; it finds a host, and can almost always find a way to survive. Eventually, people grow dependent on this corruption as a means for income, thus forming a symbiosis between the people who benefit from it, and the elites that regulate it. People sometimes ignore the corruption surrounding them, feeling that as long as the politicians do their jobs well, their ‘extra salary’ can’t hurt (BNS).

Most times, corruption impacts negatively on the development of any society. It involves the cutting of corners in order to provide substandard services in the various sectors of a society which therefore retards the growth in the respective sector such as economic sector, educational sector, medical sector, industrial sectors and other sectors. It may have negative effects such as breeding of negative work ethics, and

Corruption is a complex political, social, and economic anomaly that negatively affects developing and developed countries. It weakens democratic institutions, holds economic development, widening the rich-poor gap and certainly leads to governmental instability. The World Bank definition of corruption states that “…the abuse of public office for private gain”.