Thomas Malthus was such a bastard. From At Home by Bill Bryson:
Malthus blamed the poor for their own hardships and opposed the idea of relief for the masses on the grounds that it simply increased their tendency to idleness. ‘Even when they have an opportunity of saving,’ he wrote, ‘they seldom exercise it for all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale-house. The poor-laws of England may therefore be said to diminish both the power and the will to save among the common people, and thus to weaken one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and industry, and consequently to happiness.’ He was particularly troubled by the Irish, and believed, as he wrote to a friend in 1817, that ‘a great part of the population should be swept from the soil’. This was not a man with a lot of Christian charity in his heart.
It's amazing how this genocidal maniac's ideas have swept into the mainstream and become a part of a classic liberal education. Did you know he published his essays anonymously? He didn't even have the courage to stand behind his arguments - probably because he knew he'd be rightfully hanged for them.
Props to @lyndsaybowes for calling out this kind of thinking for what it is.
@winstonalden thanks for the blast of info, these bastards are all psychotic at best...