As the well-known phrase goes, evil occurs when good men do nothing.
Put another way, we could also say that bad things happen when the government stops caring.
Reward the rich
The Conservative Party in the UK and the Republican Party in the USA effectively act as legitimised lobbying groups for the richest in society. In the USA, lobbying by corporate interests is in any case perfectly legal, and practises that in many other democratic countries would considered "bribery" are in Washington simply part of the way doing things. In other words, in the USA, and to a lesser extent in the UK, the legislature is designed to be an instrument of most powerful, best-financed, interests.
The USA and the UK have their own idiosyncrasies in how the both "reward the rich". The revelations of the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers demonstrated how the UK's turn-a-blind-eye attitude to its various tax haven dependent territories means that it is acting as one of the world's largest facilitators of global tax avoidance. These systems are in place because they benefit the rich, who also fund the Conservative Party, and also are represented by MPs in parliament who would themselves use them. The tax system in the UK is one of the most complex and opaque in the world, and through its tax havens being legally "semi-detached" from the UK, it allows those with the means to hide their wealth as well as profit from it.
The fact that London is seen as the primary destination for oligarchs and Arab shiekhs to convert their money into capital assets (i.e. laundering their money into property) is another indication of how the rest of the world perceives the UK as a "rich person's playground". While the perception at home is fed that the UK is the mother of all democracies, the seedy reality is that the UK trades in on its reputation for integrity in order to draw foreign capital, without caring too much where it comes from. This explains why one of Britain's few remaining stable industries is arms manufacturing, and why the government is keen to remain friendly with both Saudi Arabia and Qatar, regardless of the hostility between them.
The USA has its own methods of "rewarding the rich". Apart from its own tax system that, like the UK's, is skewed is their favour, the rich in the USA do not have to worry about funding a large welfare state, unlike in the UK. And the USA has a much more visible and muscular lobbying system than in the UK to further the rich elite's interests. So while the UK still has something of a semblance of a "welfare state" (for the time being), it has other ways of making life easy for the rich, through its toleration of tax avoidance and other methods of "locking out" those lower down in the social hierarchy (see below).
Punish the poor
It has been well documented that the UK (like the USA) has some of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world. As mentioned above, the political system is designed to entrench the power of the richer segment of society, because it is they who are chiefly responsible for funding it. But when I say "funding" the system, I'm not talking about taxation; as already said, the tax system is that complex that there are many ways around it. I'm talking about political funding. The problem for everyone else who doesn't have that kind of influence is how to survive when your running full pelt just to prevent yourself falling further behind.
Because the system is designed by those without any experience of poverty (or even just average earnings), they make decisions based on their own prejudices. If I'm rich, it's because I'm intelligent and hard-working, they think to themselves. Therefore, those lower down in society must be there because they're feckless and stupid. This explains why many politicians seem so out of touch with everyday reality: it's because they are out of touch with reality! They simply have no understanding of what circumstances and situations occur when you're at the lowest rungs of society. They have no idea of the stress and psychological toll basic poverty has on people and families, and the many side effects and consequences that occur from that: from alcoholism, drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, and so on. And that doesn't even cover more "mundane" issues like having trouble paying bills, or skipping meals to pay bills. The end result of all this for many is homelessness, as we can see on our streets.
These things happen in many cases because the people involved are unable to mentally cope with the stresses of living on the poverty line. This is where petty crime comes in, and the UK government's policy to reduce funding for state services for such essentials as policing and prisons means that crime is left to fester like a cancer on society, spreading bit by bit into different aspects of society: increasing numbers violent assaults through drinking, or drug addiction to give just two examples. There are many others I could give. And then there is the effect of reduced funding to UK prisons, where reduced numbers of prison officers is now causing an unprecedented rise in drug use, suicide and violent assault in prisons themselves. This is all the result of a decision by government to choose not to care.
This is all without mentioning the "reforms" that the UK government has been making to welfare, in order to encourage more people into work (this is at a time when the UK already has what most experts would classify as close to "full employment"). These "reforms", on top of the ever-increasing trend of insecure employment, and things like the necessity for food banks, add up to a social model that seems designed to punish the poorest in society for their own misfortune.
An "anti-social" ideology
What guides the thinking of the rich elite in the USA and the UK is the Libertarian belief that government, almost by definition, is a bad thing. Of course, to the rich, government is a "bad thing" because it gets in the way of making money, and often tries to take it away from them. This is why it is necessary for them to get as much influence over government as possible, so that it works in their interest, and not against them.
In the modern era, to publicly espouse such views would be considered amoral (because they are!), so these views must instead be expressed in a way that is meant for the benefit of society as a whole. This is why "trickle-down theory" is so useful for their agenda, and why Ayn Rand was a god-send for their cause. Because Rand gave a moral argument in favour of being selfish, by saying that self-reliance was the highest virtue, it sprouted a renaissance in the form of the "greed is good" mantra. Conversely, helping others (altruism) was seen as the worst evil, as it encouraged people to rely on others. The same view was held by many in the 19th century, when "charity" was then seen as a dangerous idea that would encourage fecklessness and irresponsibility. In the form of the "Tea Party", now transformed into Donald Trump's own brand of populism, we have the same ideology today in the USA, while in the UK, it sits as unofficial government policy, also known as "The Brexit Agenda".
This ideology, now shared implicitly on both sides of the pond, is anti-social in nature, as it is against the interests of society as a whole. While the rich do what they can to avoid paying tax (and thus avoid contributing to social programs), they also do what they can to make poorer people's lives more difficult (for instance, by reducing employee rights and social benefits).
It is therefore the indifference of the richest in society to the lives of the poorest that can sometimes be literally deadly.
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