Thomas Malthus was the world's first professional economist. In 1800, he published an essay in which he laid out his argument that because population can increase geometrically (two parents have four kids who each have four kids who . . .) but food supply can only increase arithmetically (by cultivating more land), there will never – can never – be enough for everyone. Over 200 years later, Malthus is still famous for having "proved" that poverty is as inescapable as the wind and the rain. Nobody's fault. Just the way it is. The poor will always be with us.
Both Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace (who discovered natural selection independently) were reading Malthus when the underlying mechanism of evolution occurred to them. As it turns out though, Malthus was way, way off in his calculations (we go into detail in our book).
This flawed Malthusian logic was (and is) popular with conservative thinkers who are always looking for ways to justify their unwillingness to tax billionaires a little to feed poor kids. Think I'm overstating the case? Listen to the Lt. Governor of South Carolina explaining why feeding poor kids in school is just a waste of resources because they'll just "breed like stray animals."
