I have a different perspective after moving from America to a developing country. Where I live now corruption is commonplace and everyone knows it. But it is relatively petty in most cases and costs everyone a little. But America is rife with what I call legalized corruption. Laws passed to enrich government cronies. Excessive licensing requirements to eliminate competition and enrich encumbants. The list goes on. And it costs everyone much, much more.

Well, for starters, try bribing a police officer in USA vs. Russia over a speeding ticket and see how far it gets you. My money is on you going to jail in USA and getting off scot free in Russia.

Well, there's certainly less low-level corruption.

Less high level corruption, too. Jeff Bezos probably worries about a lot of things but I highly doubt that he worries Trump will throw him in jail and seize all his assets. Now if Bezos were in Russia? Putin would do it in a heartbeat [1]. There's no way you would get away with criticizing Putin the way WaPo does with Trump.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky

how can one imagine at a higher level, it will just magically get better then?

This is not the discussed point.

AKA pervasive corruption. See, also, Vietnam.