网帖翻译

Is the United States corrupt?

美国腐败了吗?

原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Che Tianyi
An interview with a Chinese who has lived in the United States for a long time, he wrote an article about the real corruption in the United States.
writer:Lixinye

采访了一个在美国生活了很长时间的中国人，他写了一篇关于美国真实腐败的文章。
作者：李新野

The US government is extremely corrupt and incurable. The loss caused by corruption in the United States is much higher than that in China. Don't think I'm joking - after reading this article, you will understand the operating mechanism of corruption in the United States.
If there is such direct corruption as "ordinary people give civil servants money in exchange for civil servants to make it convenient for you" in China, there is basically no such kind of direct corruption in the United States. Even if there are sporadic cases, the civil servants who take bribes will soon be arrested and jailed. The punishment of direct corruption in the United States is very severe.
When I first arrived in the United States, I found that the government, the government, and so on all worked in the United States. They will do whatever the laws and regulations say. They won't give you any trouble on purpose, and they won't ask you for a card. At that time, I thought that the United States was really a clean country. However, with the increase of my life experience and the gradual contact with the top of society, I found that corruption in the United States is systematic and ubiquitous.
If we only regard direct corruption as corruption, then the United States is one of the cleanest countries in the world. But in essence, corruption is the trading of power and money. By this standard, the United States is extremely corrupt.
The transaction of power and money consists of two parts, the first part is bribery, the second part is the abuse of power for personal gain.

美国政府极其腐败，且似乎无法治愈。美国因腐败造成的损失远远超过了中国。请不要认为我在开玩笑——阅读完这篇文章后，你将明白美国腐败的运作方式。
在中国，如果存在像“普通人给公务员钱以换取便利”这样的直接腐败行为，那么在美国，这种直接腐败几乎不存在。即便偶尔有此类案例发生，那些接受贿赂的公务员也会很快被捕并入狱。美国对于直接腐败的惩处非常严格。
当我初次来到美国时，我发现政府和其他部门都遵循法律和规定行事。他们不会故意给你制造麻烦，也不会向你索要贿赂。那时，我认为美国真是一个清廉的国家。但随着我在美国生活经验的增长，以及逐渐接触到社会的上层，我意识到美国的腐败是系统性的，无处不在。
如果我们只将直接的贿赂行为视为腐败，那么美国可以算是世界上较为清廉的国家之一。但实际上，腐败的本质是权力和金钱之间的交易。按照这个标准来看，美国极其腐败。
权力和金钱之间的交易分为两个部分：第一部分是贿赂，第二部分是利用职权谋取私利。

Let's talk about bribery in the United States. In the United States, it is a serious crime for ordinary people to give money to civil servants. But there are thousands of ways to bribe. Many of the answers to the question of campaign donations are actually the most superficial form of bribery. In fact, the campaign funds can not be put into the official's personal account. One of Trump's scandals was that he used campaign money to pay hush money to a pornographic actor he had called. Michael Cohen, his private lawyer, was jailed for that.
In fact, the simplest way to bribe is to invite a speech. For example, if you want to bribe an official, you can't directly charge money, so you invite him to give a speech in your company for half an hour and an hour, and then legally give the official hundreds of thousands of dollars in appearance fees. These are the personal legitimate income of officials. For example, from 2013 to 2014, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, and the appearance fee for each speech was as high as $225000. A total of three hours of speech, 675000 dollars into the account. Nikky Haley, a Republican, also paid more than $200000 per speech after leaving office.

让我们讨论一下美国的贿赂问题。在美国，普通人向公务员行贿是一项重罪。然而，贿赂的手段却多种多样。许多关于竞选捐款的讨论实际上只是贿赂最表面的形式。实际上，竞选资金不能转入官员的个人账户。特朗普的一个丑闻是，他把竞选资金支付给一位色情演员用作封口费。他的私人律师迈克尔·科恩（Michael Cohen,）因此事被监禁。
实际上，邀请官员演讲是贿赂的一种简单方式。比如说，如果你想贿赂一个官员，你不能直接给钱，而是可以邀请他在你公司进行半小时到一小时的演讲，然后合法地给予官员数万美元的演讲费，这些成为官员的合法个人收入。例如，2013年至2014年间，希拉里·克林顿在高盛、摩根士丹利和德意志银行的演讲，每次演讲费高达22.5万美元。三个小时的演讲，就赚取了67.5万美元。共和党的妮基·黑莉在卸任后，每次演讲也能获得超过20万美元的收入。

Another way of offering bribes is to set up charitable foundations. For example, Clinton and trump have charitable foundations named after themselves. If interest groups want to bribe Clinton and trump, they will donate money to their charity foundation. In fact, these foundations are essentially small private coffers controlled by Clinton and trump. They can only spend a small part of their daily expenses on charity. For example, Clinton and Hillary's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, is directly the president of the Clinton charity foundation, and receives huge salaries from the foundation. In this way, interest groups can not only pay bribes openly, but also beautify the process of bribery as "donation" and "charity".

另一种行贿的方式是设立慈善基金会。例如，克林顿和特朗普都有自己冠名的慈善基金会。如果利益集团想要贿赂克林顿和特朗普，他们可以向他们的慈善基金会捐款。实际上，这些基金会基本上是由克林顿和特朗普控制的私人小金库。他们日常的慈善支出只占一小部分。例如，克林顿和希拉里的女儿切尔西·克林顿，直接担任克林顿基金会的总裁，并从基金会领取高额薪水。这样，利益集团不仅可以公开行贿，还可以将行贿过程美化为“捐赠”和“慈善”。

There are also many American politicians who, before taking office or after leaving office, serve as executives, board members, consultants and other positions in large enterprises. Many jobs earn millions or even tens of millions of dollars a year. This kind of seamless connection between enterprise executives and government officials is called "revolving door" in the United States. For example, Trump's first Secretary of state Tillerson was once the chairman and general manager of Mobil group. Another example is George W. Bush's younger brother, Jeb Bush (Jeb Bush), who became a director of a pharmaceutical company after retiring as governor of Florida. Although these companies do not directly bribe the incumbent government officials, under this kind of unspoken rule, the officials are directly the people of those companies. Under the expectation that "after retiring from office, they will be able to return to large enterprises to receive high salaries and enjoy the glory and wealth forever". During their tenure of office, those officials will "voluntarily and fairly" formulate policies in favor of those large enterprises.

还有许多美国政治家在就职前或离职后，在大公司担任高管、董事会成员、顾问等职位。许多这样的职位年薪可达数百万甚至数千万美元。这种企业高管与政府官员之间的紧密联系在美国被称为“旋转门”。例如，特朗普的首任国务卿雷克斯·蒂勒森曾是埃克森美孚集团的董事长兼CEO。另一个例子是乔治·W·布什的弟弟杰布·布什，在卸任佛罗里达州州长后成为了一家制药公司的董事。尽管这些公司没有直接贿赂在职官员，但在这种潜规则下，官员们实际上就是那些公司的人。在期待“退休后能回到大企业享受高薪和永久的荣耀与财富”的预期下，这些官员在职期间会“自愿且公正”地制定有利于那些大企业的政策。

Of course, only paying bribes without abusing power for personal gain does not constitute a complete transaction of power and money. And the way that the United States uses power for personal gain is far more hidden than bribery. More than 90% of Americans can't understand the way the United States uses power for personal gain. (these people think that the U.S. government is not abusing its power for personal gain. Hillary Clinton's speech is expensive only because she is a star, while Tillerson was the CEO of an oil company, which proves that he is capable and qualified to be Secretary of state.)
The way for the United States to abuse power for personal gain is to take money to legislate. To sum up, it can be divided into two kinds: legalizing unreasonable things and making reasonable things illegal.
To legalize unreasonable things is to legalize things that are illegal and unacceptable in any society, so that interest groups can obtain huge profits.

当然，只有行贿而不滥用权力谋取私利，并不构成完全的权力和金钱交易。美国通过权力谋取私利的手段比贿赂要隐蔽得多。超过90%的美国人并不理解美国是如何通过权力谋取私利的（这些人认为美国政府没有利用职权为自己谋取私利。他们认为希拉里的演讲费用高昂是因为她的名气，而蒂勒森之所以能成为国务卿，是因为他曾是一家石油公司的CEO，这证明了他有能力和资历）。
美国通过权力谋取私利的方式是通过立法来收受钱财。总的来说，可以分为两种情况：一是将不合理的事物合法化，二是将合理事物定为非法。
将不合理的事物合法化，意味着将那些在任何社会中都是非法和不可接受的事物变得合法，以便让利益集团获得巨大利益。

The most obvious example is the legalization of drugs. Marijuana, a less hallucinogenic drug, is just a little fun. Smoking marijuana is as common as smoking in the United States. The most serious drug problem in the United States is actually opiates. Millions of people in the United States now smoke more than one class of opium! That is, about 3% of Americans are smoking opium. In contrast, there were only 3-4 million opium addicts in China in the late Qing Dynasty. The number of opium smokers in the United States is three times that of China in the late Qing Dynasty. Most of the opium drugs that Americans take are actually "painkillers" sold in the United States. Pharmaceutical companies in the United States, in the name of "painkillers", legally sell opiates. Many doctors in the United States, seeing that every patient in pain, prescribes opiate painkillers at will and poisons them. Do you have rheumatoid arthritis? Take opium to relieve pain! Do you have lumbar disc herniation? Take opium to relieve pain! Do you have muscle soreness? Take opium to relieve pain! So many people become addicted to opium after taking painkillers as prescribed by doctors. However, they can only go back to see a doctor and ask for more painkillers, so the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies can make a lot of money without any legal consequences. As a result, more than 70000 people in the United States die from drug overdose every year.

最明显的例子就是毒品合法化。大麻是一种致幻性较低的毒品，它在美国被视作一种娱乐方式，吸食大麻在美国就像吸烟一样普遍。而美国最严重的毒品问题实际上是阿片类药物滥用。目前，无数的美国人吸食不止一种类型的鸦片类药物，也就是说，大约3%的美国人正在吸食鸦片。相较之下，晚清时期中国的鸦片吸食者仅有三四百万人，而美国的鸦片吸食者人数是晚清中国的三倍。大多数美国人所吸食的鸦片类药物实际上是以“止痛药”名义在美国销售的。美国的一些制药公司以“止痛药”为名，合法销售阿片类药物。许多医生在看到疼痛的患者时，随意开处方阿片类止痛药，导致许多人成瘾。你是否患有类风湿性关节炎？医生可能会开鸦片类药物来止痛！你是否患有腰椎间盘突出？医生可能会开鸦片类药物来止痛！你是否感到肌肉酸痛？医生可能会开鸦片类药物来止痛！因此，许多人在遵医嘱使用止痛药后成瘾，然后不得不再次就医，要求更多的止痛药，从而使医生和制药公司在没有任何法律后果的情况下赚取巨额利润。因此，每年有超过70000人因药物过量在美国死亡。

One of the most notorious pharmaceutical companies is Purdue pharma. Oxycontin, the Opium painkiller produced by the family, has caused numerous people to become addicted to opium. The Sackler family, the founder of Purdue pharmaceutical, used a small part of the money they earned from drug trafficking to buy cultural relics and donate them to museums, so as to turn themselves into cultural philanthropists. There is also a secler Museum of Archaeology and art in Peking University. I also know the granddaughter of the seclerian family, who have been active in the upper classes of New York.

其中一家声名狼藉的制药公司是普渡制药。该公司生产的奥施康定（一种阿片类止痛药）导致许多人成瘾。普渡制药的创始人萨克勒家族，用他们从药品销售中获得的部分利润购买文物并捐赠给博物馆，以此将自己塑造成文化慈善家。例如，北京大学就有一座塞克勒考古与艺术博物馆。我还了解到萨克勒家族的孙女，她们在纽约的上流社会中非常活跃。

Another example is the legalization of usury. The Chinese government stipulates that loans with interest rates over 15.4% are usury. However, local laws in Taiwan Province of China stipulate that the maximum interest rate of loans should not exceed 20%. In the United States, when you go to any big store, or even when you pay online, businesses will ask whether you want to apply for a "credit card" to borrow money and spend ahead of time. The interest rates of these credit cards are all around 25%. If various "handling charges" and "fines" are included, the actual interest rate will be higher. According to China's standards, there is no doubt that there is a proper usury. As you know, Americans can't add, subtract, multiply, and divide, let alone index interest. Therefore, these businesses first bombard with advertisements to promote consumerism and stimulate the desire of ordinary people to consume. Then, they downplayed the interest rate of usury, or deliberately misled them, saying that "only 50 dollars a month" was paid, which made many Americans who were poor in mathematics fall into the trap of usury and the abyss of bankruptcy.

另一个例子是放贷的合法化问题。中国政府规定，任何超过年利率15.4%的贷款都被视为高利贷。然而，在中国的台湾省，地方法律设定的贷款利率上限是20%。在美国，无论你走进哪家大型商店，或者在网上进行支付，商家都会询问你是否想要申请一张“信用卡”来借款并提前消费。这些信用卡的利率通常高达25%左右。如果算上各种“手续费”和“罚款”，实际的利率会更高。按照中国的标准，这无疑是高利贷。众所周知，许多美国人在基本的算术运算上都有困难，更不用说理解复利的概念了。因此，商家首先通过广告轰炸来推广消费主义，激发普通人的消费欲望。然后他们对高利贷的高利率轻描淡写，或者故意误导消费者，比如说“每月只需支付50美元”，这导致许多数学基础薄弱的美国人陷入了高利贷的陷阱，最终走向破产的深渊。

Another way for the United States to abuse power for personal gain is to outlaw what is reasonable. This is the most secretive form of corruption in the United States. In detail, in the name of protecting the people, protecting the environment, and protecting culture, the legislation establishes extremely strict rules and regulations for all walks of life to eliminate market competition, so that the monopoly interest groups controlled by a small number of white and Jewish people in Western Europe can obtain hundreds of times of profits permanently and legally.
Limited by space, I would like to give only one example here, that is, medical care in the United States. The medical industry in the United States is the largest interest group in the United States. At present, about 18% of GDP in the United States is spent on medical care, which is the highest in developed countries, while the medical level in the United States is the lowest in developed countries. The life expectancy and other indicators of the United States are similar to those of developing countries such as Lebanon, Cuba and Turkey. In contrast, China's medical expenditure accounts for less than 7% of GDP, and the per capita medical expenditure is about one tenth of that of the United States, but life expectancy is only about one year lower than that of the United States, and is still rising.

美国通过权力谋取私利的另一种方式是将合理的事情定为非法。这是美国最隐蔽的腐败形式之一。具体来说，以保护人民、环境和文化为名，立法机构制定了极其严格的规则和法规，目的是消除市场竞争，从而使西欧少数白人和犹太人控制的垄断利益集团能够长期合法地获得巨额利润。
由于篇幅有限，这里只举一个例子：美国的医疗保健行业。美国的医疗行业是美国最大的利益集团之一。目前，美国大约18%的GDP被用于医疗保健，这在发达国家中是最高的，而美国的医疗水平却是发达国家中最低的。美国的平均寿命和其他健康指标与黎巴嫩、古巴、土耳其等发展中国家相近。与此同时，中国的医疗开支不到GDP的7%，人均医疗开支大约是美国的十分之一，但平均寿命仅比美国低大约一岁，并且还在持续提高。

Why is it like this? Because the United States through a variety of stringent legislation, artificially create scarcity and monopoly, so that the medical system can obtain huge profits. First of all, through the "prescxtion drug system", so that patients can not take their own medicine when they are sick, they can only go to the hospital. I remember when I was a child with an inflammation of my throat. My parents went to the drugstore downstairs and bought me a bottle of antibiotics for a few yuan, and I was cured. After I arrived in the United States, I had a sore throat and needed to take half a day off. I was waiting in the clinic for a few hours. The doctor talked to me for about 30 seconds and prescribed 10 identical Chinese penicillins. For this bottle of antibiotics, I have to spend hundreds of dollars on medical expenses, including about 1000 dollars of work lost in half a day. My throat was inflamed once, and I lost 10000 yuan.

为什么会这样？这是因为美国通过一系列严格的法律，人为地创造了稀缺性和垄断，从而使医疗体系能够获得巨额利润。首先，通过“处方药制度”，患者生病时不能自行购买药品，只能前往医院。我记得小时候喉咙发炎，父母只需下楼到药店花几元钱买瓶抗生素，我就康复了。而当我在美国遇到喉咙痛时，我需要请半天假，在诊所等待数小时。医生和我交谈了大约30秒，给我开了10粒中国制造的青霉素。为了这瓶抗生素，我不得不支付数百美元的医疗费用，加上半天无法工作带来的损失，总计1000美元。仅仅因为一次喉咙发炎，就损失了约10000元人民币。

Ironically, the U.S. animal husbandry industry is seriously abusing antibiotics. In order to make the cattle and sheep less sick, the livestock farmers add antibiotics to the feed every time they feed. So there is a magical phenomenon in the United States. Now in the United States, animals take antibiotics every meal, whether they are sick or not. Even if human beings are terminally ill, they cannot buy antibiotics without doctors. What's more, I'm now in the United States, where I can buy marijuana at will, but I can't do anything about antibiotics.

具有讽刺意味的是，美国的畜牧业却在严重滥用抗生素。为了减少牛羊生病，养殖户在每次喂食时都会在饲料中添加抗生素。这就造成了美国的一个神奇现象：现在在美国，动物无论是否生病，每餐都在吃抗生素。而人类即使病重，没有医生的处方也无法购买抗生素。更甚的是，我在美国可以随意购买大麻，但对于抗生素却束手无策。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Corresponding to the strict prescxtion drug system is the strict control of prescxtion right and the shortage of manufacturing. In the United States, if an ordinary person wants to become a medical practitioner and get the prescxtion right, he really has to go through 9981 difficulties. In China, the college entrance examination is directly applied for medical undergraduate and master's degree. After five years, you can go to many hospitals to become a doctor after taking the certificate of practice. In the United States, to become a medical practitioner, you must have a medical doctor's degree. To apply for a doctor of medicine, you must have an undergraduate degree. But there is no medical education in all American universities. So you have to waste four years of your undergraduate education and get an undergraduate degree in chemistry or biology. And then it takes another four years to get a medical doctor's degree. You still don't have the prescxtion right at this time. It takes you three to eight years to become an intern to get prescxtion rights. That is to say, from the time you graduate from high school, even if you didn't choose the wrong major and didn't leave school to prepare for the exam, you also found a internship position with only three years, and it would take you at least 11 years to get the prescxtion right.

与严格的处方药制度相配套的，是对处方权的严格控制和药品生产的短缺。在美国，如果一个普通人想要成为医生并获得处方权，他必须经历重重困难。在中国，你可以直接通过高考申请医学本科和硕士课程，五年后就可以考取执业证书成为医生。而在美国，要成为医生，你必须拥有医学博士学位。要申请医学博士课程，你必须已经拥有本科学位。但美国所有大学都不提供医学教育，所以你不得不先用四年时间获得化学或生物学的本科学位，然后再花四年时间攻读医学博士。即使这样，你还没有处方权。要获得处方权，你还需要3到8年的实习经历。也就是说，从高中毕业开始算起，即使你选择了正确的专业，顺利毕业，并且很快找到了仅需三年的实习职位，要获得处方权至少也需要11年的时间。