Apart from all else: I think that one problem in politics is that people in power rarely recognize the need that most people have for security. Most people are not serious gamblers: they would rather have a smaller but secure income than chronic insecurity with the possibility of high gain (obviously it depends to some extent on the probabilities and amounts involved). Economies generally work the same way!
Politicians, high-ranking media people, and top entrepreneurs and bankers are generally people who have themselves chosen high-profile, high-stakes, insecure careers. They may really be motivated by risk, and inhibited by too much security, so they think it's the same for everyone! A large part of it is that they mostly start out richer than most, and can thus literally afford to take more risks: Trump was able to survive a business bankruptcy or two because of the money he'd inherited; Cameron and Osborne would not go without groceries if they lost their ministerial posts or even their seats. And part of it is having something of a gambler's personality.
And it has led to an insecure 'non-tenured society', disastrous for people and disastrous for economies. And of course much more disastrous for poor people than rich people, for reasons implied in the last paragraph: thus reinforcing and increasing existing class differences in the name of 'meritocracy'.
It is even worse when it gets mixed with the so-called 'compassionate conservativism' of the likes of Duncan-Smith, who think that poor people are not only failures at the competitive game, but actively immoral, and that they need to be disciplined out of their poverty. As this article implies, this results in libertarianism for the rich and authoritarianism for the poor.
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