I think the stakes are higher as they work though new grifts so that it affects more people directly.
We've always had corruption in things like import licenses, liquor or gaming.
The problems started accelerating when we got into areas that were for public good and privatizing taxes:
Defense became a huge deal during WWII and then during the cold war with the whole military industrial complex. This didn't hurt anyone except more taxes.
Then we had the war on drugs and privatization of jails and the profit incentive was more people in jail for petty crimes, now there were classes of people directly affected by this policy.
We moved on to making traffic horrible so that we would buy off on privatization of roads with toll roads build with public bonds that transferred the risk to taxpayers and profits to corporations.
Privatization and deregulation of our electric providers means the focus is on profit instead of providing a service so when the power goes down and rates skyrocket we get to use more taxes to line the pockets of the corporations that don't have the best interest of the public at the top of their priority list.
Now we're doing the same thing with education by intentionally making it bad so that people will buy off on vouchers to enrich out of state business interests.
So the more they dig into the "for the public good" areas to privitize things that are really public services the more it affects the population.