This administration has taken it to a whole new level -- basically an organized crime syndicate.
The system has always been corrupt in that the rich write the rules but this is pure kleptocracy. Remember that Nixon was told by his own party that his conduct was unacceptable and they would not support him...
Nixon also got pardoned and faced no real repercussions for his actions other than leaving. Again, I very much believe we have been this corrupt for many decades, it is only the visibility of the corruption that has changed. What few actions against corruption we have seen was just good PR work, as evident by its lack of teeth in sentencing and complete lack of any enforcement or investigation against anyone with money or political power.
I think that it's wholly incorrect to argue it has not gotten worse. The government has always been corrupt, true. They have gotten far more open and brazen about it, true. But they are also far more grotesquely corrupt in outright disgusting ways, which is different. No other president has just gifted themselves billions of dollars of taxpayer money. No other president has bulldozed the whitehouse for open ended self gratification projects on the scale Trump as. No other president has openly run family-centric money laundering schemes of this magnitude, or openly accepted foreign bribes, etc etc etc.
It was always corrupt but my word, you can't say that it's the same corruption just more exposed.