So is crime. But it's all about prevalence.
And not just because corruption has some "indirect taxation" effect, but also because low corruption/trust is a big enabler for a society.
You are never gonna get rid of clannish mentality, vigilantism, nepotism and other undesirable behavior if your citizens don't have any trust in the system.
If you just look at e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Corruptio...
you will see that the spread is very wide, and China/India is significantly behind most western nations.
This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)
Corruption is everywhere and varies in degree. The US likes to claim a mantle of superiority when it seems quite the opposite. We have a bully/greatest conman ever in the white house
Are they?
Price Andrew got a name change, but hasn’t had any real penalty to date. He had the Queen protecting him. Mandelson probably will end up in court but it won’t be for anything related to child abuse.
For the British Royals, I suspect becoming persona non grata is more impactful than a jail sentence.
Corruption is, of course, universal. China has a corruption problem that will be eternally difficult to tackle from the top-down—local officials are notoriously much more corrupt than central ones. But in the west, we simply pretend to not have the issue at all, or we simply make it legal. I would prefer if our politicians or popular media could at least acknowledge this.