Meanness is a good word to describe many facets of life today:

Infants left in the care of strangers because both parents have to work long hours just to keep a roof over their heads.

LOW, low wages and a society that expects you to fund your own retirement, health care, college costs and a simple house whose price tag is out of sight for the majority earning the bottom 50% of wages.

Now, the rich don't want to pay a little extra of their extravagant wages in taxes to help fund health care -- which of course is mostly a nod to the wasteful and greedy insurance companies.  

Meanness is the word, and it applies to our society at large.  Somehow we've chosen to live this way.  We were fed a fantasy of being rich and powerful, but the only way you become rich and powerful is to enslave 90% of those below you.  If you remember a bit of math, 90% is the vast majority of any group.