Because if they don't pay off both sides then one of them will eventually come after them.
You need to pay off both mob bosses, or else.
No. If they don't pay off both sides of the politics then when their side gets kicked out someone else can pay the other group to change laws for them which will cost you contracts and business and lots and lots of money.
For a tiny amount, you bribe both sides so no matter who wins you get to change laws and create an environment where you can make more money... whether it is allowing you to fire people without warning for any reason you want, or to keep minimum wage low.
Politicians come and go... Microsoft and Apple and Google and Amazon will outlast all of them...
The ones who profit most are the politicians,
They get peanuts... the whole point of the bribe is to influence laws and regulations in their industry to help them and to make things harder for their rivals. This costs millions but they earn billions.
You don't give a politician a 10 million dollar donation to his campaign fund cause you like him... you give the 10 million to get him or her to vote against government regulation of your industry that stops you earning hundreds of millions each year. Government regulation is communism... but of course when you are making billions each year and prices are getting too high for customers and they start complaining your bribe no longer prevents regulation... what it does is it gets you seats at the table when that government decides on regulations for that industry... the official justification will be that you are the experts and you were there as an advisory role because politicians are not experts in that industry and we want to regulate it and not destroy it or make it uncompetitive with the rest of the world...
So your guy makes sure any rules are designed so your company can keep making good money and possibly other big rival companies become less competitive and make less... which will increase your share price... well worth the bribe.
Doesn't matter how much these companies bet, in the end, the house always wins.
It is the other way round... governments come and go but big business is making huge money through its bribes and corruption and paying out a pittance in bribe money.... in the US MIC the bribe is as simple as... you are in charge of deciding who makes the next US aircraft carrier... there is only one company that can manage the job anyway but if you make the terms so we make the most possible money on this contract in 10 years when you are ready to retire you can take my job.
I have my job now because 10 years ago I had your job.... remember me? You were under me and I recommended you for your current position inside the Pentagon... if you play ball with me when you retire in 10 years you can have my job because I don't want to work forever... like me you get your military pension, but the company i work for will give you my job which means having lunches and dinners on their tab with the pentagon officials in 10 years time that make decisions on big ticket items... you get free air travel, you get a salary of a million dollars a year and you can work for 10 years and then you pass it on to someone else, which means most of the time you get the contracts... they sell themselves because there is little to no competition in the US MIC... there are not dozens of companies competing for each contract.
It is all about who you know and not what you know but these guys usually know their stuff anyway...
But it is not called corruption either.
The lie factory media has clearly turned on the society that hosts it.
Ironically there is plenty of real racism going on right now... no need to make it up from the past...