History Main / TheRichWantToBeRicher

A SubTrope of {{Greed}} and CapitalismIsBad. Compare with MoneyFetish, for when characters love money for no reason. See also LovesOnlyGold and GoldFever for the gold/precious metals-specific trope.

--->"Mr. Simpson, I dread the day when $100,000 isn't worth begging for."

* In the [[WesternAnimation/ColorClassics Fleshier Studio short]] "Greedy Humpty Dumpty", Humpty Dumpty is rich, but he's greedy and wants even more money. He thinks he can get gold from the sun because it's yellow and somehow manages to build a wall to space, only to find the sun too hot to touch.

-->'''Mori''': Infinite Greed.

* The ''ComicBook/{{Condorito}}'' character Maximo Tacano (lit. Maximum Greedy) is a rich businessman who's a friend of Condorito. Despite having a fortune, Maximo still wants to get more money, usually offering loans to his friends with ''higher'' interests, PlayedForLaughs obviously.

** Scrooge [=McDuck=] is the richest person in the world but is always eager to become even richer, willing to use business savvy, grand adventure, hare-brained schemes, or (at his ''very'' worst) [[CorruptCorporateExecutive dirty dealings]] to accomplish this goal. This eventually results in an [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech epic rant]] from his nephew [[WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck Donald]].
--->I've had a bellyful of BOTH you eternal fools! Year in, year out, you bring GRIEF on yourselves all for the sake of GETTING rich, STAYING rich, or getting RICHER still! You'll NEVER be happy, because you always worry about what you'll do NEXT to complicate your OWN GREEDY LIVES!

* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in ''Film/Aladdin2019'', when Genie is first explaining his wish-granting powers. He mentions that a lot of people ask for power or money.
-->'''Genie:''' Do me a favour, ''do not'' drink from that cup. I promise you there is not enough money and power on earth for you to be satisfied.

'''Noah Cross:''' The future, Mr. Gittes, the future.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''. Lampshaded by Jaime Lannister's aunt Genna, in a discussion of how a rival House might try to assert their claim to Riverrun despite already owning profitable lands. "Why does a man with one pot of gold need another? Men are greedy."

** In "Who Shot Mr Burns?", Mr. Burns resorts to disguising himself as the teenaged Jimbo to try and trick Principal Skinner into signing over the school's new oil well to him. When this fails, he outright steals the well using a slanted oil rig. This episode in particular is notable, as Mr Burns' behavior escalates into supervillain-level of greed, culminating in him ''blocking off the sun'' so he can gain a complete energy monopoly over Springfield. He earns so many enemies from his actions that when someone shoots him, [[WhoMurderTheAsshole virtually everyone in town is a suspect]]. [[spoiler:Ironically, what got him shot was [[EvilIsPetty even pettier]] than all of the above -- he tried to steal Maggie's candy. [[EpicFail And failed]], with his gun accidentally going off in the struggle. [[JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife Over a lollipop]].]]

So there are people out there with money. A lot of money -- [[Fiction500 enough money to buy a country even]]. You'd think they'd be satisfied with such a fortune, right? Most would be. But some people, no matter how rich they are, are always [[{{Greed}} hungry]] for even more fortunes, and will go to great lengths to achieve this goal.

A SubTrope of {{Greed}} and CapitalismIsBad. Compare with MoneyFetish when characters love money for no reason. See also LovesOnlyGold and GoldFever for the gold/precious metals-specific trope.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'': [[spoiler:[[TheEvilPrince Prince Hans of the Southern Isles]]]] turned out to be a GoldDigger who sought to become King of Arendelle by [[FalseSoulmate faking his romance]] with Anna and [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident "staging an accident"]] for Elsa. He's already wealthy due to his status as a foreign prince but wants to become a King by any means possible because of his status as the SpareToTheThrone back home, and killing his father and 12 older brothers, who are ahead of him, would raise eyebrows. He has been confirmed to be a subversion of the PrinceCharming trope Disney is known for.

* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in ''Film/Aladdin2019'', when Genie is first explaining his wish-granting powers. He mentions that a lot of people ask for power or money.
-->'''Genie:''' Do me a favour, ''do not'' drink from that cup. I promise you there is not enough money and power on earth for you to be satisfied.

-->'''Rule of Acquisition #18:''' "A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all. "

-->'''Dominic:''' So that's what this is all about. '''Money.''' Nothing more. Just making money...and it doesn't matter how many '''lies''' he tells or how many people he '''ruins''', just as long as he's making more and more '''money.'''

* In the [[WesternAnimation/ColorClassics Fleshier Studio short]] "Greedy Humpty Dumpty", Humpty Dumpty is rich, but he's greedy and wants even more money. He thinks he can get gold from the sun because it's yellow and somehow manages to build a wall to space, only to find the sun too hot to touch.

* ''WesternAnimation/GeorgeOfTheJungle'': When Super Chicken learns one of his former classmates literally stole Rhode Island, he wonders why someone who's already rich would steal and an old school picture of said classmate says it's to become richer.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Played with in the case of Warren Buffett; an AffluentAscetic, he lives a relatively modest lifestyle but is still deeply involved in finance (he views his fortune as a form of keeping score, and plans to give most of it away after he dies).
* Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, and his company has a virtual monopoly on online shipping. Amazon continues to venture into new fields like video streaming to gain more profits, and the company has come under hot water for overworking their employees, who often can't even take bathroom breaks.
* TruthInTelevision in general (but certainly not always), the people who could live like kings for the rest of their lives work exhaustingly long hours to make more money.[[note]]Though whether it's as physically exhausting as the people who work ''for'' them is questionable. Many of them make the majority of their money from investments, not labor.[[/note]] For some, this may be because they enjoy their jobs or see it as important or beneficial to society, but for others, it's because wealth is not seen as a means to an end, but instead a measure of their success as a person. The true reward wealth brings once you are already rich is social capital, and the chance to cement a bigger "legacy" (i.e. having your name plastered on more buildings).
* Also truth in television in an entirely different sense. Most people end up with friends and work colleagues who are in the same wealth bracket as they are. Which means that even millionaires can consider themselves to be only reasonably well-off, rather than rich because they are comparing themselves with their peers. On a global scale, almost everybody living in a rich-world country is richer than at least 90% of the world's population and live like kings compared to the majority of people (both alive today and throughout history). Yet the vast majority of people in those countries don't consider themselves rich, and plenty of them still want to become a lot richer than they are.
* John D. Rockefeller supposedly said, "How much money does it take to make a man happy? Just one more dollar."
* Labor union pioneer Samuel Gompers once gave a speech about how everyone always wants more money, which started with a mention of the employers claiming that the workers won't be satisfied if their demands of a ten-cents-a-day raise are met and will just demand more, and ended with the statement "the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day."
[[/folder]]

---> I've had a bellyful of BOTH you eternal fools! Year in, year out, you bring GRIEF on yourselves all for the sake of GETTING rich, STAYING rich, or getting RICHER still! You'll NEVER be happy, because you always worry about what you'll do NEXT to complicate your OWN GREEDY LIVES!

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'': [[spoiler:[[TheEvilPrince Prince Hans of the Southern Isles]]]] turned out to be a GoldDigger who sought to become King of Arendelle by [[FalseSoulmate faking his romance]] with Anna and [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident "staging an accident"]] for Elsa. He's already wealthy due to his status as a foreign prince, but wants to become a King by any means possible because of his status as the SpareToTheThrone back home, and killing his father and 12 older brothers, who are ahead of him, would raise eyebrows. He has been confirmed to be a subversion of the PrinceCharming trope Disney is known for.

* ''VideoGame/Uncharted4'': The antagonist, Rafe Adler, is already pretty wealthy but is disgruntled because he's IdleRich i.e the wealth was inherited to him rather than earned. And so he wishes to find the treasure of Henry Avery so he can have a part of his wealth that he gained himself despite having to rely on the Drake siblings to point him where he needs to go to find it.

* ''Webcomic/DominicDeegan'': Serk Brakkis, the antagonist of the "Battle for Barthis" arc. Already the own of a successful sports team, his plan is to use the death of his star player and Barthis having been destroyed in a previous arc to build a stadium over the ruins of the town despite the protests of the town's residents and isn't above bribing officials and spreading false rumors to make it happen.

* ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' has Mr. Kornada, the "[[KickedUpstairs Vice-President of Paperclip Allocation]]" at Ecosystems Unlimited. He implements a plan to "kill" (lobotomize to non-sentience) his planet's robots so he can steal their wealth. Thankfully [[PointyHairedBoss he is as stupid]] as [[CorruptCorporateExecutive he is greedy]] -- when his robot lackey presents the completed plan that will put seven percent of the planet's wealth in his pocket, his first question is if he can get control of the other [[ArtisticLicenseEconomics ninety-three per cent]].

** [[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/trading This trope is exploited]] by forcing insider trading firms to do their business through increasingly complex technological means, incentivizing the corporations to develop new transportation and energy technologies to keep up. This eventually results in a post-scarcity society where everyone is rich forever. At which point the Trading Firms freak out because the real purpose of their greed is to buy status through exploiting others. Then they go to war themselves (in tanks) so they can force others to worship them.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter's father-in-law Carter owns a multi-million dollar company, but is always eager to earn a little more money. In Carter's case, it's for the challenge running his business gives him rather than just the money itself, as shown when Lois convinced him to retire to Florida in one episode. With nothing to strive for, Carter turned into a near-catatonic shell of himself within a few days.

** In "Who Shot Mr Burns?", Mr. Burns resorts to disguising himself as the teenaged Jimbo to try and trick Principal Skinner into signing over the school's new oil well to him. When this fails, he outright steals the well using a slanted oil rig. This episode in particular is notable, as Mr Burns' behavior escalates into supervillain-level of greed, culminating in him ''blocking off the sun'' so he can gain a complete energy monopoly over Springfield. He earns so many enemies from his actions that when someone shoots him, virtually everyone in town is a suspect. [[spoiler:Ironically, what got him shot was [[EvilIsPetty even pettier]] than all of the above -- he tried to steal Maggie's candy. [[EpicFail And failed]], with his gun accidentally going off in the struggle. [[JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife Over a lollipop]].]]

* Also truth in television in an entirely different sense. Most people end up with friends and work colleagues who are in the same wealth bracket as they are. Which means that even millionaires can consider themselves to be only reasonably well-off, rather than rich, because they are comparing themselves with their peers. On a global scale almost everybody living in a rich-world country is richer than at least 90% of the world's population and live like kings compared to the majority of people (both alive today and throughout history). Yet the vast majority of people in those countries don't consider themselves rich, and plenty of them still want to become a lot richer than they are.

* Labor union pioneer Samuel Gompers once gave a speech about how everyone always wants more money, which started with a mention of the employers claiming that the workers won't be satisfied if their demands of a ten cent a day raise are met and will just demand more, and ended with the statement "the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day."

** In "Who Shot Mr Burns?", Mr. Burns resorts to disguising himself as the teenaged Jimbo to try and trick Principal Skinner into signing over the school's new oil well to him. When this fails, he outright steals the well using a slanted oil rig. This episode in particular is notable, as Mr Burns' behavior escalates into supervillain-level of greed, culminating in him ''blocking off the sun'' so he can gain a complete energy monopoly over Springfield. He earns so many enemies from his actions that when someone shoots him, virtually everyone in town is a suspect.

** https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/trading - This trope is exploited by forcing insider trading firms to do their business through increasingly complex technological means, incentivizing the corporations to develop new transportation and energy technologies to keep up. This eventually results in a post-scarcity society where everyone is rich forever. At which point the Trading Firms freak out because the real purpose of their greed is to buy status through exploiting others. Then they go to war themselves (in tanks) so they can force others to worship them.
** https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2569 - A Unitarian ethics computer overlord is hijacked by an anomalous sociopath who manages to gain ''genuine'' exponential happiness; every penny he earns from the sweatshops gives him more quantifiable happiness than what all his workers combined could ever feel. By his command, the computer enslaves humanity for the sole purpose of making the happiest man alive happier than the combined happiness of a utopia, in direct contrast to its actual purpose. He still demands suppression of free speech because he still wants even more happiness from being the only storyteller in the world.

** After being fined 3 Million $ for illegal dumping in "Marge Vs. The Monorail", Burns shows up in a PaperThinDisguise, wearing a fake moustache and calling himself "Mr Snrub", at the town meeting to try and convince the town to give the money back to the plant, even though it's such a paltry sum for him he was ''literally'' carrying it around in his wallet.

* TruthInTelevision In general (but certainly not always), the people who could live like kings for the rest of their lives work exhaustingly long hours to make more money.[[note]]Though whether it's as physically exhausting as the people who work ''for'' them is questionable. Many of them make the majority of their money from investments, not labor.[[/note]] For some, this may be because they enjoy their jobs or see it as important or beneficial to society, but for others, it's because wealth is not seen as a means to an end, but instead a measure of their success as a person. The true reward wealth brings once you are already rich is social capital, and the chance to cement a bigger "legacy" (i.e. having your name plastered on more buildings).

* Labor union pioneer Samuel Gompers once gave a speech about how everyone always wants more money, which ended with the statement "the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day."

[[folder:Anime]]

So there are people out there with money. A lot of money - [[Fiction500 enough money to buy a country even]]. You'd think they'd be satisfied with such a fortune, right? Most would be. But some people, no matter how rich they are, are always [[{{Greed}} hungry]] for even more fortunes, and will go to great lengths to achieve this goal.

A SubTrope of {{Greed}} and CapitalismIsBad. Compare with MoneyFetish for when characters love money for no reason. See also LovesOnlyGold and GoldFever for the gold/precious metals-specific trope.

* In the [[WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts Disney short]] "Greedy Humpty Dumpty", Humpty Dumpty is rich, but he's greedy and wants even more money. He thinks he can get gold from the sun because it's yellow and somehow manages to build a wall to space, only to find the sun too hot to touch.

So there are people out there with money. A lot of money - [[Fiction500 enough money to buy a country, even]]. You'd think they'd be satisfied with such a fortune, right? Most would be. But some people, no matter how rich they are, are always [[{{Greed}} hungry]] for even more fortunes, and will go to great lengths to achieve this goal.

** Scrooge [=McDuck=] is the richest person in the world, but is always eager to become even richer, willing to use business savvy, grand adventure, hare-brained schemes, or (at his ''very'' worst) [[CorruptCorporateExecutive dirty dealings]] to accomplish this goal. This eventually results in an [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech epic rant]] from his nephew [[WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck Donald]].

* ''Series/{{Fargo}}'' Season 3: V.M. Varga is a walking, talking embodiment of this trope. The head of an international corporation called Narwhal, wealthy enough to afford several jets, sophisticated computer equipment, and a private army of thugs, Varga's only goal in life is to stockpile money for himself by any means necessary (including blackmail, fraud and murder). He reasons that a human's only true value in life is proportionate to the amount of money they make.

* ''Series/OuterBanks'': Ward Cameron, a successful business man who uses his wealth to aide his treasure hunt, as well as frame and blame his competitors.
* ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce'': Mr. Collins is the head of [=BioLab=], a highly successful company. But over the course of the series, he first builds a weapon to help the city of Silver Hills battle [[BigBad Ransik]], then commissions a private security force called the Silver Guardians to protect people who can afford them, often pitting themselves against Ransik's powerful mutant warriors to do so (with usually painful results). Time Force Red Ranger (and Collins' son) Wes is not pleased at this, and calls Collins out on it:

* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'': The Umbrella Corporation was the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world, but this wasn't enough for the guys in charge; they started researching into viral weaponry, intending to sell their creations to the highest bidder.
* ''VideoGame/SlyCooperThievesInTime'': [[spoiler:[[BitchInSheepsClothing Penelope Mouse]]]] turned out to be a GoldDigger who sought to conquer the planet by [[FalseSoulmate faking her romance]] with Bentley to convince him to build weapons to sell on the black market. She's already wealthy due to her status as a champion ace pilot and from the wealth of the Cooper Vault, but wants to become a Queen by any means possible. She's practically the DistaffCounterpart of [[spoiler:Prince Hans]] from ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}''.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter's father-in-law, Carter, owns a multi-million dollar company, but is always eager to earn a little more money. In Carters case, it's for the challenge running his business gives him rather than just the money itself, as shown when Lois convinced him to retire to Florida in one episode. With nothing to strive for, Carter turned into a near-catatonic shell of himself within a few days.

** In "Carter and Tricia", he bought the Pawtucket Patriot brewery and ordered them to start making beer cans out of a cheap yet toxic metal, all so he could save a few dollars. Ironically, the metal he wanted to replace the cans with was "the one they make prison toilets out of", because he assumed they're cheaply made, while in reality they're made of stainless steel.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Mr. Burns, the billionaire owner of the local nuclear power plant. He's easily the richest man in town, but is always on the lookout for more money.

-->"Mr. Simpson, I dread the day when $100,000 isn't worth begging for."

* Mr. Krabs from ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' is a very rich and successful business owner. However, he is still cheap and on one occasion tries to rip off a man's arm for a penny.

** In "The Tooth Fairy's Tats! 2000", the boys get involved in a "tooth fairy racket" (tricking the parents of rich kids into thinking they put a tooth under their pillow, then taking the money they put there before anyone realizes), and are soon rich enough to afford a number of luxuries. But when they see a news report (actually a lure for a dentist's sting operation) proclaiming that an IllChild will be given $600 for an operation he needs by the tooth fairy, they leap to get the money.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter's father-in-law, Carter, owns a multi-million dollar company, but is always eager to earn a little more money.

** In "Carter and Tricia", he bought the Pawtucket Patriot brewery and ordered them to start making beer cans out of a cheap yet toxic metal, all so he could save a few dollars.

--->'''Mori''': Infinite Greed.

** Scrooge [=McDuck=] is the richest person in the world, but is always eager to become even richer, willing to use business savvy, grand adventure, hare-brained schemes, or (at his ''very'' worst)[[CorruptCorporateExecutive dirty dealings]] to accomplish this goal. This eventually results in an [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech epic rant]] from his nephew [[WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck Donald]].

* The "Exaggerated" version on the "Playing With" page describes Jeff Bezos nearly perfectly. He's the richest person in the world, his company has a virtual monopoly on online shipping, and yet Amazon workers are horribly mistreated, prevented from even taking bathroom breaks.